*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.
The odds were stacked against *Reina, who was born with sickle cell anaemia in a desperately poor family in northern Uganda, and then experienced the trauma of being displaced by rebel insurgents at the age of seven.
This summer I led a team of four UK teachers to Soroti, Uganda to undertake three days of intensive special educational needs (SEN) training for teachers and playworkers from SEN settings across central Uganda.
What a beautiful group of people! It took us almost three days to reach Kabompo, in rural north-west Zambia, but we were met with an extremely warm, sung welcome and over the following week the joy from the children kept coming.
'News' doesn’t always happen to ‘other people’ – sometimes it hits people we care about, and hits them hard. Several of our partners have experienced major challenges recently, due to events which made headlines around the world.
“The stony track was too narrow for a car, we had to walk. Over three days, hot and dusty, we climbed hills, crossed streams on rotting planks, and trekked through ‘bush’. At the end of the hike, we’d find a small traditional mud and wattle house with a grass-thatched roof, home to a family with a child with disabilities. No electricity. No running water. Families struggle to survive in such harsh environments, walking miles for clean water and trying to cultivate land for food. Able-bodied children walk several kilometres to school. Children with disabilities are isolated and...
So you want to write to your sponsored child? That’s great! Sponsoring a child can be very rewarding for both the sponsor and the child, and part of that is the correspondence you can build up between you.
