100 successful students graduate Viva Equip in Uganda!

“Children were lining up outside my office to confide in me!” An excited Macu tells a room full of smiling graduates, as she delivers a heartfelt speech at the recent Viva Equip People graduation ceremony on Saturday 26th March.

Macu, a recent Viva Equip graduate herself, is a Child Restoration Outreach Manager working in central Uganda. “I have been working with children for years, but before this training there were many grey areas where I just felt like I didn’t have the resources to help or protect children properly,” she explained to her fellow classmates, who were nodding in agreement. “But thanks to this training, my staff and I can now look after children much better. And what is most amazing is that the children are the first to notice the improvement.” She continued enthusiastically, “Never before have children queued so patiently at my door just for the opportunity to speak to me! But this is because they know now that there are people who will really listen to them and who think it is important to help them.” Her closing remarks beautifully summarise the overall benefit of the Viva Equip training: “I am a better person for it- I am a better worker, mother, neighbour, manager and friend and this will all now be reflected in my work with children; in how I treat them, care for them and protect them against the dangers that they have all had to face so far in their short lives.”

Daya gets a new home

In a culture that places great importance on family and tradition, bringing a child from the streets into your own home is not something people do lightly. Yet when Udita Kapoor met seven-year-old Daya in one of the poorest parts of Biratnagar, Nepal, she knew that was exactly what she wanted to do. Why? Because what she had learned through Viva Equip People had engaged her heart as well as her head.

The Viva Equip People training is currently running in Biratnagar, Butwal and Kathmandu, and Udita is one of 20 church and project staff taking the course in her area. Learning how to help children in the context of their culture, family and background, and understanding how to value and listen to them, were quite new concepts to Udita, and she found that it transformed the way she interacted with children.

Viva Equip People journeys to Somalia’s frontline

Oketch Mukhwana, a soldier in the Ugandan Army, took part in Viva Equip People when he began working in the children’s department of a military hospital. “We are working with the children of soldiers” Oketch explains, “and there are so many special things about their lives we must understand if we want to help them properly. But before I did not have any experience of working with children, and there was so much I did not know. When I started on this Viva programme it was amazing how my eyes were opened.” Oketch was particularly struck by the module about understanding each child in his or her context, learning what exact risks children face and how to help them thrive despite the problems.

And so the student becomes the teacher

When Grace Nyiringabo took the Viva Equip People training two years ago she had no idea that she would one day end up actually teaching it!

In 2009, alongside 40 other project staff working with children at risk in Mbale, Uganda, Grace spent eight months gaining the key skills needed for effective and compassionate child care. “This course helped me so much” says Grace. “I feel that spiritually I have grown and my heart has been changed. I didn’t know how to handle children at my work place, and I was not doing my work from the bottom of my heart but really just to earn a living. Now I can confidently say that I am committed to seeing the lives of children changed and helping them become better people- all that God intended them to be.”

Saving Girls from Sexual Slavery

You may have read my post about a trip to Nepal this summer when, along with six child care professionals in business suits, I travelled eight hours by bus and spent the night in a church, in order to attend an important graduation. (I might mention that on the way we saw a lorry tip off the road and get pulled up again by just five men with a rope and pulley – the power of working together!) Celebrating this graduation wasn’t the only thing I did in Nepal though. I also checked up on what’s happening with the Daughter programme, which is now being run by 145 churches around Nepal. 

Girls reading the Daughter leaflet

Many people think of Nepal as a ‘shangri-la’ of mountains, centring around Kathmandu – a hippie haven filled with bright flags and colourfully dressed locals. Less popular with tourists and foreign imaginations are the southern plains that produce most of Nepal’s agriculture and border with India. It’s here that Daughter is having the biggest impact, because it’s here that children are taken from (or sometimes sold by) their families into bonded labour, circuses, and sexual slavery in India’s cities and Nepal’s brothels. What I have for you now are some stories about how Christians working together are saving real children from a life of slavery and abuse.

You voted for it: Caring for Workers

In last week's poll we asked you what child care workers need most.  Of course the people who care for vulnerable children need many more things than what we listed, but if we started including things like 'malaria pills' you'd never be able to choose.

6% of our readers thought child care workers need more money,

68% thought they need better training,

and 25% of you thought they need a vacation.

You're all right.  Although it sounds materialistic to say child care workers need more money, they certainly do!  Not only for themselves, but simply to run the projects properly.  Many of the projects Viva works with are just generous people who open their homes to orphans, or give their time to care for disabled children.  They try to stretch their income to cover the costs and elicit donations from others in their community, but funds are usually hard to come by.