Photo: Children on our main campus were happy to celebrate the completion of construction on the orphan home.
We’re happy to announce that the Uganda orphan home construction project is now complete. The project was funded at the turn of the year, official ground-breaking occurred in January, and the basic structure and roof were in place by April. We ran into some unforeseen delays with the plumbing as well as budget issues due to prices rising since we received the original quotes in mid-2013. Once more funds were raised, construction resumed and we are now very close to moving in.
The new space is a four bedroom home of 2,100 sq. ft. (195 sq. meters), which will house 8 orphans (4 girls and 4 boys) that our Uganda director and his wife have adopted as their own, in addition to their three biological children. The new home will provide about double the space as the previous facility, allowing us to take in a handful more orphans and provide our existing orphans with much more adequate and secure living quarters. The new orphan home is a great improvement on the previous space which is currently located in a dilapidated rental facility that is inadequate with no running water, no electricity, no bathroom, and no indoor kitchen.
We have a “Christmas wish list” of improvements we’d like to add to the new home to make it safer and more habitable. These items include: painting the interior walls, lockers for the children’s personal belongings, a water motor pump to connect our existing water well to the plumbing for water supply, and a perimeter wall for the children’s security. We are also seeking funding for solar power for the home, to provide power to the electrical wiring already installed; there is no power service in the region where the home is located. All told our “wish list” goal is $18,500.
We constructed the home in such a way that it can adjoin to a future expansion — we hope to begin construction in 2015. The planned expansion would provide an additional 1,000 square feet to the existing space, allowing our Uganda directors to adopt 10 more orphans into their family. It would also include staff quarters to provide space for an additional staff member to help care for the newly adopted children. The expansion should cost around $35,000.
With profits from our native-led farmland along with your support and contributions from our generous donors, we look forward to reporting back on more improvements made to our new Uganda orphan home.
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