Bonny and Philip traveled to our Kenya program to see it and learn since it has served children for over 16 years. Specifically, they wanted to learn how to open and operate a community center like Kenya’s. They want to create a centralized location for their program serving hundreds of children in the slums of Kampala.
Jane showed Bonny and Philip the Mama Beth’s Children’s center, which includes a kitchen, preschool, offices, and sewing program all on-site, as well as space for special events like VBS and bible studies. They learned about the feeding program serving hundreds of children at three local schools and toured the project site where homes are being built for families in most need.
Jane was excited to have Bonny visit since he has experience running a financial literacy and savings program with women in Uganda. She wanted to learn how to provide this for the women in Kenya. While in Kenya, Bonny and Philip met with women in the community, helping equip them with skills in financial management, entrepreneurship, banking and loans.
Afterward, Bonny shared, “It was an honor listening to their touching stories and getting to hear their aspirations. Many of the ladies are single mothers who depend on petty income from washing clothes and helping out on people’s farms, many times they lack what they need to feed their children, and it’s upon this that they desire to start up a savings group through which they can borrow money and start their own businesses. We shared success stories of the women in Uganda who started this up and now own businesses; some have their own houses.”
This trip had a tremendous impact on both programs in Uganda and Kenya, inspiring and equipping the leaders with the tools they needed to take the next steps in their community development plans. Jane has started a women’s savings group in Kijabe, Kenya, and Bonny has purchased four acres of land to build a community center. Bonny shared, “By building a community center, we’d have a safe, consistent place to offer holistic care to these children, including meals, health checkups and medical care, spiritual discipleship, gardens for training and food, a transitional home for helping street kids get reunited with families, and an office space for our program staff.”
Please join us in praying for wisdom over the planning of this new community center in Uganda. Go here to contribute or learn more about this project.
Bonny and Jane walked away with a great appreciation for one another. They taught each other how to enhance their holistic community development programs. Jane remarked, “This visit was of paramount importance to both organizations.”
In the work we do, relationships are everything. Engaging with and learning from each other, encouraging and dreaming together…that’s how we build holistically as the Global Body of Christ.
Jesus calls us to step outside of ourselves—our own ways of viewing and doing things—if we are to follow him, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself” Matthew 16:24. The same is true when ministering cross-culturally. Ministering to those in a culture different from your own is
A special message from our Program Directors in Mexico, Victor and Lety Velasco: Hola and Feliz Navidad from Forward Edge and our program down here in Oaxaca, Mexico. We want to tell you a story of the impact you’re making. One of the first families to join our program 10
In the extremely poor village of Kijabe, Kenya, there lives a crippled widow named Mary. After her husband died of AIDS a few years ago, she struggled to find food. While she suffers from HIV, too, Mary’s greatest challenge is a nerve problem in her legs. She has to use crutches
Viola lives in the slums of Kampala, Uganda with her parents and five siblings. Living conditions in this area are cramped and unsanitary. Viola’s family lives in a small, brick, two-bedroom house. The whole family shares one room and the other one is used to house chickens and a goat that
18 yrs. old
Entered the program: January 2019
Majorine lives with one of her sisters and two older cousins in a five-bedroom house in which her aunt passed away from COVID-19. The family uses a charcoal stove or firewood to cook. They boil water for drinking which they fetch from a tap behind the house. Majorine's cousins raise ducks, turkeys, and chicken for food for the household but also to sell.
Majorine's sister, Allen, brother, Reagan, and cousin, Irene, are also in the LAC program.
