It's Friday and I am asking you to pray for Suubi Teen MOPS in Uganda. The week began with a conversation about preventing malaria. Sylvia and Brenda both had malaria from mosquito bites this week. The rains are coming soon. And with the rains comes the rise of malaria. Uganda has the honor of being the country with the highest rate of malaria in the world. It cost 200,000 shillings to treat the sickness. That's 51 Euros/ 53 USD per person. The average person in Uganda makes 2 USD per day. So one case of malaria is nearly a month's income. It is more than one month's rent. It is capable of wiping out everything we have for food. If all our people get malaria it's financially devastating! So we need prayer to protect the people from malaria Typhoid fever and other water-borne sickness that arise with the rains. We bought a mosquito repellent soap. We might have to invest in new bed nets. And a great deal of thought is going into how to prevent mosquitos in our pond at the Suubi center. All our people have a water filter. But there are thousands of people in Uganda without clean water. They lack money for bednets. They don't have money for soap. I would like the women at the Suubi center to begin to make mosquito repellent soap. We need funds to pay for the materials. It requires oils and essential oils. It's not free to make. But we can potentially save lives while teaching the skill to our women. Our finances are overstretched. I wish we could just do this...but we are overstretched in every area. We would gladly give away thousands of bars of soap in the village and the slums. We just need funding. If someone gave us a grant for soap...we would begin making it. We require 5000 USD. We could reach 15,000 people.
The soaker pit was filled in with gravel and soil. This pit receives greywater from the showers. The water soaks deep into the ground. On the top of this ground, they will plant canna lilies. I purchased the seeds yesterday. It's going to be a beautiful area. The center is 100% off-grid. It's a constant learning curve to figure out how to build sanitation solutions. But we are making progress.
School is going to begin in less than 2 weeks. We don't have anything close to the money needed. I am grateful that some of the kids did receive 2nd sponsors. About 8 of our kids can return to school this fall. But most of these kids are in the first and 2nd grades. Most of the older kids ( we have 13 kids over the age of 10) don't have the sponsorship needed to return to school. We rejoice with the ones who get to go. And we weep for those who don't. But we still have a few more weeks. So I am praying for better. The final photo is a footstool design from plastic bottles. I am always searching for ideas to generate income. I especially care about helping to solve more than one need at once. My idea is to design a footstool cover that can be sown by our women in Kampala. And we want to design a classroom curriculum on how to make the footstool from recycled plastic. The curriculum would talk about plastic recycling, the women that made the cover, and poverty fair trade. The goal would be our women sewing covers for entire schools that wish to do a large recycling program. Nicole will help me write the 8-part curriculum. We are going to have different friends test the curriculum with their kids. And perhaps this can help the women at Lilly Avenue earn additional income while helping to reduce plastic waste. That's the vision.
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