Monday 23rd February

Today has been a very varied day. Some of us started off in the garden making bunting out of colourful flags made by the children of Bowden school. This will look great hanging in the newly decorated girl's dormitory at NVI.

Then we went to Jinja City View Cakes run by Joshua (the Passionate Chef) who received his Catering qualification at NVI sponsored by Ugandaid. It was wonderful to see how well this young man has done and how receiving this qualification has given him a real chance of starting his own business. He has a little shop in Jinja and makes the most wonderful cakes. His dream is to pass on his Catering skills to others but shared how difficult this has been over the last year. He will do well I'm sure.

We went straight from there to Child Restoration Outreach (CRO), a project in Jinja which reaches out to the many, many street children of Jinja. Noah who heads up the project there explained some of the journey that they try to lead the children on towards reconciliation with their families. The team consists of social workers, teachers and a House Mother amongst others. Initially the team reach out to the children aged between 5 and 17 through meeting them on the street and providing them with a meal a day. The team get to know the children and work with them over a period of time to build their trust and teach them the word of God. Once the child has realized that living on the street is not where they want to be they may move into the residential part of the project . About 25 children can be accommodated and the process of reconciliation with the family can begin. If all goes well the family is reunited, sometimes this is not possible and other family members are approached to take on the child. Eventually they are supported to go to school.

It was incredible to see these young people, some as young as 8 who were formerly living on the streets in school uniforms praising God with us. What a privilege and what an amazing work .

Jane