Our Jam Business

Last year we decided to begin a jam business with some of the mothers of the boys. For a long time we had tried to give them some form of employment to enable them to be less reliant on us and to teach them some kind of money management. We found it so difficult, nothing seemed to work until we hit upon the idea of making Jam.

With the help of a friend Joanna we began. This Project gave the parents employment and allowed us to teach them money management by dividing up their wage in parts. Contributing to school fees, rent, medical and also savings etc.

There have been hicups due to Jam going bad and being cheated on the labels. During the time of making the Jam we saw the parents change and grow in self worth and noticeably happier.

Business has always been on my heart, the more I have stayed in Uganda the more difficult it became to rely solely on people's support. So I realised to have one or two businesses that were successful enabled us to be more independant and to accomplish more with the boys and their families. So we hope to begin the jam business again with more success this time.

Lizzie's Mum

How we are Today.

This is us 8 years later. There are10 teenage boys ranging in age from twenty-one down to fifteen and one teenage girl aged thirteen. There are also some younger children. Grace is 8 years, Diana 5 years, Lizzie 18 months and Jude, my son, is 16 months. The oldest Sere is in his last year of A-levels. The rest of the Boys are all in Secondary and Akwedde Erina, the teenage girl, is in Primary 6, one year before her last year of Primary. Grace is in year 4 and Diana is in year 1 where she attends the day care which I run.

When starting the work and dealing with the whole family I soon realized that the boy's brothers and sisters were also in danger of living on the streets or being effected by the life of the slums so we felt it necessary to put all of them into school too. So in all we pay for 27 children's education.

We look after the children and their families health care, their clothing and when the families are without food we will help them by providing a meal or two.

When the children were younger I realised that everytime the children would return to their homes in the evening instead of going straight home they would just go back to the streets, to the film halls etc and this was effecting their studies and their behaviour. The families were always coming to me for house rent because most of them were street people themselves, just beggars on the street. So I moved every family out of the slums and rented them a two roomed house which was bigger and a lot brighter. This impacted the children so much, their school grades improved, their emotional and social behavour improved and they were generally happier and more confident.

In the last few years the parents who spent most of their time begging and drinking, had lots of fights and had to keep moving houses because the land lords couldn't tollerate them. So I decided to rent one big house and divided it for a few families. It meant It was easier to visit the families, monitor their behaviours and counsel them on cleanliness and taking care of themselves. I still rent the individual houses too. All together we rent 4 small houses, and two big houses.

When we moved house two or three years ago we found it was a long distance to school and their own homes and it was easier because we had room for some of the boys to live with us. But we still encouraged them to keep a close relationship with their own families.