Sarah

Meet Sarah.  She has been with us in Bundibugyo for over a year now, teaching our  missionary children at Rwenzori Mission School.  As her teaching load is lightening, she is taking on many BundiNutrition activities.  She’ll be overseeing procurement of food for feeding centers, overseeing activities of the extension officers in charge of the farms, BBB production teams, goat programs, and feeding programs,  keeping financial accounts and reporting to the home office.  As I (Karen) have been handing my responsibilities over to Sarah this past month, it’s been great to see how capable and willing she is.

 

Next week, I will be leaving Bundibugyo and will be moving with my family to Southern Sudan (www.whmsudan.blogspot.com) to lead a new team.  Our hope is to serve the community there as they rebuild after decades of war and hold out the hope of Christ.

 

I go knowing that BundiNutrition remains in good hands with Sarah, Jennifer, Heidi, Pat, Scott , Lamech and Pauline.

 

My great thanks to all of you for your faithful prayers and giving that are the backbone of this ministry.  May God bless you.

 

2 Corinthians 9:9-11

" 'They share freely and give generously to the poor. 

Their good deeds will be remembered forever.'

For God is the one who provides seed for the farmer and then bread to eat.  In the same way, he will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you.  Yes, you will be enriched in every way so that you can always be generous.  

And when we take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God."

The Dowdys

David and Jacqui Dowdy are a friendly British couple that have been working in Masaka (2 hrs west of KLA) for over a decade. They run a farm comprised of hundreds of dairy goats with a few cows, donkeys and meat goats in the mix for good measure. They train orphans in animal husbandry. In turn, profits from the farm pay school fees for the orphans. They have also been involved in training the surrounding communities in goat care and tree planting.

The Dowdys have generously shared their knowledge with us in Bundibugyo. They facilitate the purchasing of the goats we bring into the district from the small scale farmers in Masaka that they've trained. They have done trainings in Bundi and are the ones who recommended that we have agricultural extension workers. The success of the Matiti project is greatly attributed to them.

Yesterday, they were in Kampala for a graduation and we were able to meet up with them. I was excited to share that we were looking at two shipments of goats due to the amazing generosity of those who bought Christmas goats. We began discussions as to how to begin that process.

They also had exciting ideas about how they were interested in helping us follow up on the goats born within our program. They'd like to help us be intentional about choosing the best milkers to breed with the sons of the best milkers to produce an African breed of dairy goats. Supposedly that is how the European breeds came to produce such a large quantity of milk: selective breeding.

Why are we interested in good milkers? The more milk they produce, the more milk needy children can drink.

Donato

Meet Donato, the Senior Administrative Assistant for the Kwejuna Project, which serves HIV positive women and their families. Actually its a very misleading job title since Donato's role is quite varied. Donato has been with working with World Harvest for almost 4 years now, before the Kwejuna Project even had a name. He was one of the folks chosen as a community mobilizer in the fall of 2003 when Drs. Scott & Jennifer were informing communties about the upcoming HIV prevention project that was about to be launched for pregnant women. Donato did such an outstanding job of organizing these community events and liaising with the local village heads, that he was brought on to provide day to day support and supervision to what came to be known as the Kwejuna Project. His role involves making sure the sites - now 9 - have adequate supplies to conduct HIV testing to all mothers who come for prenatal care; helping to collect data for the monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly reports we are required to submit; and helping to work with the many staff scattered across the district. His latest responsibility has been to take on the procuring of over 3,000 kilos of beans from Kasese - a town 4 hours away - as part of our food supplement program. The latest shipment of beans arrived last Thursday, and have been stacked in our store, ready to be given out to the 125 women expected to arrive this Thursday. What a blessing Donato is to the Kwejuna project!

Pauline

I’d like to introduce you to Pauline. She is an animal husbandry extension worker. She came to Bundibugyo in Sept 2006. She began assessing the health and condition of the dairy goats that had been placed in villages earlier in the year. She went on maternity leave and is back with Keith, a healthy young boy.
Currently she is supervising the 2 projects on mission property: the chicken coop and the Dairy Goat Breeding Station. She will arrange for supplies from Fort Portal like grain feeds, medicines and vaccines. She’ll manage coop changes for the chickens as they grow. She’ll direct the breeding, record keeping and tagging of goats. She will be responsible for identifying and treating sick animals.
She is also designing and overseeing the fodder (animal food) fields as well. There is a small garden for the chickens greens. There will also be a demonstration garden. It will show local people how to grow food for their family on their plots of land, while interspersing it with goat food to get the most out of their land.

Pamela

Hi, I'm Pamela Brown-Peterside and I help to manage the Kwejuna Project, our program which aims to prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children (PMTCT). Following 9 years of directing a community-based research site in New York City with high-risk HIV negative women, I first came to Bundibugyo in November 2004 to help out with Kwejuna when it was in its first year. I was drawn to coming here in large part because I was excited about moving into prevention with HIV infected women, serving on the frontline of the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa and doing so living and working alongside other Christians. I stayed for 3 months, and then felt called to return for a 2 year committment and arrived back here in January 2006. My role in Kwejuna is largely administrative. I help to support our sites -we now have 9 - by providing supervisory support to the Ministry of Health staff who implement the program, ensuring they have have adequate supplies to conduct regular HIV counseling and testing for our pregnant mothers, and assisting with obtaining monthly reports from these sites, which give us a sense of how the program is doing. I also try to track the follow-up of women who are identified as HIV positive and faciliate their linkage into care. In Bundibugyo, there are 2 Ministry of Health clinics that provide HIV care and antiretroviral drugs to infected patients, and I help to facilitate the smooth running of these under-staffed and bursting-at-the-seams out-patient services. I have also worked with traditional birth attendants (also known as lay midwives) by providing training to them about PMTCT and encouraging a stronger relationship between them and professionally trained midwives who are hospital based. One of the highlights of my role over the past year has been to co-ordinate bi-monthly distributions of food to our Kwejuna mothers and their families, which up until the end of 2006 had been supplied by the UN's World Food Program. Now that these food supplements have ended, we are currently hoping to raise funds (about $15,000) to continue this program for an additional year. If you would like to contribute to this effort, please email me at PamelaBrownPeterside@gmail.com for more information about how to do so. Thanks!

I don't have a personal blog per se, but if you'd like to know more about my work in Bundibugyo with World Harvest Mission over the past year, please visit www.lamppostmedia.net.

Alex

This is Alex. He is a Ugandan Christ School agriculture teacher with a lot of knowledge and hands on experience with chickens, goats, even fish! He is also working as a chicken consultant. Alex is coordinating the construction of the chicken coop, purchase of chickens, vaccinations, and hiring of a chicken keeper. Alex is really hard-working, with responsibilities ranging from teaching students to caring for goats and fish ponds. I admire his devotion to his family - though he lives far from them, he pays school fees for his younger brothers.

Lamech

Here is a gifted man. Lamech has come to serve in this remote district, though his home is elsewhere in Uganda. His training is in animal husbandry, and he is a terrific communicator. Since Sept 2006 he's been visiting the homes of all of the local dairy goat breeders to bring encouragement and has continued training on care and feeding of the goats. There is not a good veterinary care system in place in Bundibugyo, so he also provides those services. December and January he spent his days meeting with sub county leaders and their communities. Some days he has about 100 people gather to learn. He is helping them to understand the value of dairy goats and how their care differs from the local goats that are in abundance. Lamech is also helping the people who will receive goats at the next distribution (planned for March) prepare shelters and identify fodder. People are always telling him how grateful they are for his time and valued advice.

Stephanie

Hey everyone, I’m Stephanie Jilcott. When I was a World Harvest intern in Bundibugyo 2 years ago, I worked on the World Harvest Mission/ Nyahuka Health Center Nutrition Program. After completing my graduate studies in nutrition, I decided to return to Bundibugyo for 18 months to continue working with the WHM/NHC Nutrition Program. I am also working on decentralization of the current Program to 2-3 additional health centers in the district; with decentralization, we hope to transition to providing patients with locally available foods. One locally available food is eggs - We have nearly finished construction of a chicken coop as part of a demonstration project to use eggs for children in the nutrition program. To educate the community about the importance of healthy young child feeding practices, we have commissioned nutrition dramas to be performed in several villages. In January 2007, we collected anthropometric data from 900 children from 30 different villages in Bundibugyo to guide programmatic efforts.

Scott & Jennifer

Our team leaders, Drs. Scott & Jennifer Myhre, have been addressing health concerns in this community for well over a decade. Currently they are running the Kwejuna Project which acts to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child (PMTCT). They provide medical attention to the mothers and children. For over a year, they have been the conduits of World Food Program rations for HIV/AIDS mothers. Now they are looking for other sources of nutritional assistance. Jennifer has spearheaded the WHM/NHC Nutrition Program and continues to care for the sick children who are enrolled as well as those who are inpatient at Nyahuka Health Center. They have a great blog: http://www.paradoxuganda.blogspot.com/.

Pat

This is Pat Abbott. She has been an incredible assest to this team for over 15 years. Her warm way of interacting with people allows her to enjoy rich relationships with many Ugandans.
Over the past few years, she has run two weekly pychosocial support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS. She has also weighed, measured and cared for many young children in the World Harvest Mission/Nyahuka Health Center Nutrition Program.
Currently she is on Home Ministry Assignment in the States until May. She is hoping to catch up with a lot of you during that time.

Karen

Hi, I’m Karen Masso. I’ve been living in Bundibugyo since 1995. The nutrition projects I’m currently involved in are the Matiti Project and the World Harvest Mission/Nyahuka Health Center Nutrition Program which carries out regular food distributions.