*Ruth was carried to school by her mum, a 4km journey on rough, hilly paths. After just four days, Ruth was asked to leave as she couldn’t use the toilet without help. She wasn’t welcome.
Another trip to Uganda with Global Care, another trip full of surprises. This time it wasn’t the resolute acceptance of poverty that took my breath away, but the phenomenal impact of two disability projects: Global Care works with a Disability Support Group (DSG) in Abeko, in Northern Uganda, and in the South West, the Rukungiri Disability Project helps children with mobility difficulties to access education. Both projects have changed the lives of children, families and whole communities – in only a year!
Overcrowded classrooms. Limited sanitation. High teacher turnover. An expensive and confusing new curriculum. Political turmoil. Poor water supply. Hunger. Period poverty.
A new welfare support worker joined the team at the Morning Star Care Centre, in Sri Lanka, in January, thanks to the efforts of our intrepid Dragon Boat Racers last summer.
Seven year-old *Rima’s father was a soldier in the Syrian army. One day a militant group in their home town of Daraa stopped him, took him to the desert and shot him.
What a privilege, encouragement and a challenge to listen to Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, speak at the RISING Forum, a peace conference in Coventry’s beautiful Cathedral this morning.
There’s a measure of tragic irony in the fact that, for years, we’ve had to explain to people that even though we’re called Global Care we are about children, not the environment… and now we are learning that caring about children also, increasingly, means caring about the environment.
*Micha’s father already had ten children by his first wife, when Micha and her brother were born to his second wife. Massive tension between the two women meant the family home in the slums of Kolkata, India, was a place of quarrels and strife.
