By Jamie Stuart
As usual, I will be donating all my birthday gifts this year to Hope Center Gulu. While I’d love to hug you all in person and receive cash donations for the Center, this year we have to make do with virtual hugs and online donations. If you’d like to show me your love and put a smile on my face, please donate to help us keep the center running and reaching those in the most need during COVID-19.
I co-founded the Hope Center alongside a badass team of local and international women in 2015, and I’m lucky that since then, Gulu City in Northern Uganda has become my second home.
It breaks my heart to hear the struggles that regular people there are going through, while in most developed countries I hear complaints mostly limited to boredom and an imaginary threat of empty toilet paper or hand sanitizer: products which have increased up to 400% in price in Northern Uganda, a number which pales in comparison to the 800% rise in food prices in Gulu City. Other issues are rising too, and there are a few that the Hope Center aims to tackle:
· Families are experiencing actual food shortages – not just imagined ones in supermarkets
· Individuals who lived day-to-day completing jobs have no income or savings to provide for their families and buy what little food is available
· These stresses are tearing apart family structures and, where those are not allowed to move freely because of the lockdown, leaving many to endure abuse at home.
I can assure you 100% of proceeds will go towards supporting local communities in the following ways:
· Providing free seeds and crops for households to develop their own reliable and independent food source
· Contributed towards relocating women and children from abusive households to relatives who can care and support them
Furthermore, HCU is maintaining all our Ugandan staff on full salaries. As well as applying for funding and distributing food to vulnerable people, our amazing team continues growing our Girl Power program by producing and distributing our eco-friendly reusable sanitary pads to vulnerable women and girls.
Please help us help those women and children who live in the most marginalised communities in the world experience a glimmer of hope in this extremely challenging time.
Letter From Programme Manager Kevin Okumu:
COVID 19 DONATION TO THE VULNERABLE WOMEN THROUGH THE TASK FORCED.
As we all aware of the current pandemic which has affected the whole World, It has hit people in different ways from one to another economy of a particular country. Hope Center Uganda which is based in Gulu is also affected. This disease is not a joke , it does not care about class, wealth and standards . And all we care about is health , feeding and shelter .
The majority of the population are affected since most of them wereon causal labor that would make them survive from hand to mouth . Due to the crisis all work places are shut down . So many community and families are affected at the moment, where possible, the middle class have relocated to the country side home with their families . The majority of the people left in urban centers are extremely vulnerable and the time of the outbreak few of them could relocated to villages, leaving them in a terrible living situation.
COVID-19 is a sign to make us start leading a reality of life , the government and the people are struggling to meet their daily needs but right now everyone is stuck, a mother is confronted with children needs and its causing more GENDER BASED VIOLENCE in various families . Households are breaking up , women have been the pillars for all the basic needs for their families and they are stuck with a confronting situation that they cannot deal with.
I am therefore requesting that we come together and we create amazing fireworks and we lighten up this households with food supplies and seedlings for vegetables for those who have small piece of land within their compound to have a kitchen garden around their homes so as to bridge the gap of hunger in various household. Am coming with this since its falling within my birthday , I would want to share with them the love and are you have for me within this trying moment.
Northern Uganda as one of the under developed region in Uganda is greatly affected since the majority of the community are under employed.
Hope Center Uganda 