El Shadai Foster Home

Introduction

El Shadai Family Foster Home is run under an umbrella organisation called Rejoice Outreach International. It was started in 2002 by Uncle Stephen Wante - who initially took in his siblings who had been staying with relatives who were mistreating them. Later, Stephen expanded the home to take in children from outside. Some of these children have
lost their parents due to HIV/AIDS. Today the home caters to 26 children.

The long term goal of the home is to secure a future for these most vulnerable of children through providing a conducive home and atmosphere for the children. The children receive counselling, vocational training and a Christian upbringing.

The vision of Rejoice Interntional is to restore and heal broken hearted
lives spiritually, physically, economically, socially and psychologically. We aim to create a secure and peaceful environment for healing, encourage self-reliance and to reduce illiteracy, poverty, domestic violence, child abuse and drug abuse.

Project Director

Stephen Wante runs this project. He is himself an orphan. He is qualified in marketing,
public relations,
counselling and is a trainer for family life
education and family
therapy.

The volunteer coordinator for this project is Nicola Samson from the UK. Nicola has volunteered from November 07 to August 08.

More about our ideals:

We intend to foster children
with love, care and compassion. Counseling and guidance
will assist in changing negative behaviour, and enable the children to perform better academically.

We intend to sensitize the community on
educational, social and developmental matters like encouraging the girl child to go to school and advocating for childrens
rights.

Who do we need?

We require volunteers with teaching skills, or experience in training, advocacy,
lobbying or looking after children. Those with administrative skills and/or counselling and guidance skills are also most welcome.

Your Job

- Teaching children at home
- Training children, youth, women in developmental issues in communities.
- Admin work such as organizing the filing system, typing on the computer, updating the children’s files.
- Counseling and guidance
- Mobilising resources for the organisation
- Training children in music, dance and drama, poems and skits.
- Parenting skills training
- Sensitizing and lobbying.

The Environment:

We are located in Bugembe, Jinja. Jinja is about 2 hours east from Kampala, the capital city.

Accomodation & food costs:

Volunteers rooms are separate from the children's rooms. Volunteers are
provided their own bed, bedding, and mosquito net, and may share a room with
another volunteer

Project Newsletters

The following newsletters are available:

March 2007 (21 KB)
April 2007 (75 KB)
June 2007 (15 KB)
October 2007 (169 KB)
November 2007 (80 KB)
January 2008 (460KB)

Read more about various volunteers' experiences here