Former Director of Watoto, UK and current senior Pastor of the International Church of Luzern-Switzerland together with MCSU team.

Migadde, Gombe, Uganda: International City of Peace

We welcome Sarah and Alex Ongom and the citizens of Migadde in Gombe, Uganda as they establish their community as an International City of Peace. The organization Milo Child Support Uganda takes care of the needy and vulnerable in the Gombe area of the country. Milo Child Support Uganda supports human dignity and human rights as the central frame of reference for their organization. MCSU “respects cultural values of the local population and it adapts activities to social and environmental conditions.”

Note: Introduction page with information primarily at the time of joining International Cities of Peace. For updates, please contact the liaison.

Under child care, MCSU is developing a program: “LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND“ where  Children with Disabilities are also cared for.

In the slum of Migadde a child born with a disability is destined for a life of dependency. For the poor this burden can be extreme. Disabled children are a social, financial, mental and physical burden to their families. Through lack of knowledge and skills of the family, the children do not get the appropriate help they need.

The children do not go to school and hardly leave their homes. Therefore, they are not challenged and do not develop mentally or physically. Families will often favor a healthy child over a disabled child, when it comes to food and attention.

Exclusive education for the children with disabilities has led to few opportunities existence in the work place for people with disabilities. With the growing population size and the lack of jobs, very few people with disabilities get paid employment. They are often confined in their homes and are dependent on their family for life. Disabled support and awareness in Uganda is in its infancy.

Based on the information above, we concluded that many disabled children in the Kaaso Migadde, Gombe division, Wakiso district do not get the appropriate support. This project will contribute to the improvement of the current support. Milo Child Support Uganda works with the area local leaders to provide special support. The project will focus on promoting awareness of the existing benefits, offer support special education to children with disabilities in Milo Educational Center.

Milo’s outreach team visits the areas in the the community to identify the unprivileged disabled children. We identify the disabled children and determine what their initial needs are. Then the outreach team decides what the best provision will be and who will provide those provisions.

ABOUT MILO CHILD SUPPORT UGANDA (MCSU)

 MILO child support Uganda is a registered Community Based Organization that was established in 2019 in Migadde-Kaaso zone, Block 71, Gombe division in Wakiso district, Uganda. The organization was purposely established to support and take care of the poor, needy, vulnerable, orphans and street Children as well as other identified needy persons from the central region of Uganda.

This was after realizing that most of these Children were living under extremely difficult situations and were in dire need of help from individuals, government, non-government organizations and people of goodwill. This is an initiative of a Ugandan native working and living in Switzerland who would love to transform his community.

 

MSCU’s Core programs are; Child care, child basic and quality education, vocational skill training, Health, Water, relief and response. Our projects give the underprivileged children of Migadde- Kaaso a chance to escape their difficult social situation. Our flagship program is Child Care and we have successfully implemented programs related to it for over 4 years now in the rural central region of Uganda, impacting over 600 children.

Our livelihoods protection and youth empowerment program address psychosocial and economic problems among youth in Migadde and surrounding communities. MCSU is currently implementing its activities in Wakiso and looking forward to spread to other districts.

Through trainings, youth and women are taught different skills in Sewing and Tailoring, PET- plastic bottle building bricks, weaving, computer applications, carpentry and joinery, Environment management, Hand Craft training, Computer training, Plumbing, Mechanics and Party Decoration, Leather tanning, entrepreneurship among others.

After their training, they are expected to be able to produce good quality products leading to increase in Gross Domestic product and profitability. Secondly they will be able to effectively work in their village settings able to creating jobs among themselves.

 

VISION

To promote social and economic inclusion by ensuring that marginalized children have equal access to healthcare services and educational opportunities. “Working towards Community Sustainable Development”

The Organization’s strategic objectives include:

  • Making education equitable in order to eliminate disparities and inequalities by equipping every Child with basic skills, achieving poverty reduction and human development as well as providing equal opportunities to children from marginalized communities.
  • To collaborate with other genuine local and international Organizations’ working in the field of environmental
  • Promote child rights and to lift children and youths out of poverty in low resourced areas of
  • To empower youth with Vocational Skills and keeping them out of current dangers (HIV/AIDS, Early pregnancy), breaking the York of vulnerability and having good working conducive environment to enable them obtain a successfully/ desirable life so as to eradicate poverty in Uganda. To cater for the social welfare and health for the elderly
  • To promote Water, Sanitation and hygiene Programs in the Communities within Wakiso
  • To engage in social, economic and agricultural activities as a way of attaining poverty alleviation in the
  • To support people with disabilities (PDWs) in Wakiso
  • To promote Community Sustainable and Development
  • Providing free medical attendances and outreaches
  • Providing emergency health services to the people of Kaaso
  • Providing mobile clinics to outlying and remote villages of Kaaso
  • Maintaining a registry of the heath status of all patients in the region and to continuously monitor their conditions
  • Working alongside government health facilities to provide quality healthcare to the people of

 

 

 

MCSU Projects summaries

Child care, basic and quality education

At MCSU, we believe that Child basic and quality Education is a basic human right, a top priority, means a lot towards his/her Future and a way out of poverty for the Children, both in Uganda and globally. But many still do not have the opportunity to learn, especially if the live in poverty or are girls. Many barriers stand in the way of the Children receiving an education, from unaffordable school fees and lack of basic facilities. These are often compounded by some cultural practices such as early marriages and pregnancies, as well as by the general preference of boys over girls, both of which make education out of reach for many girls. In Uganda, threats of natural disasters and civil conflicts also disrupt many children to access Education.

MCSU has so far impacted the lives of 600 girls and boys directly through education sponsorship and provision of scholastic materials and donation of school Income generating Activities to young pregnant mothers. The beneficiaries have been enrolled in primary, secondary schools, tertiary learning institutions and have further been monitored both at home and school occasionally to ensure they are attending school on a regular basis. Performance and conduct of the students is monitored in liaison with the contact teachers and the guardians of the students.

MCSU works in partnership with the local schools, guardians and communities to ensure enrollment, school retention and completion of education of the child and formation of MILO CLUBS in partner schools.

MILO main concern is the realization of sustainable development in which the children, teachers and the community are involved in positive activities that will ensure socio-economic welfare in the entire locality and ensure proper learning environment by providing habitable accommodation. It is also in a way assisting the Government attains the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) by providing ablution facilities at the school. The vision of MCSU is peaceful co-existence and development in which every child participate equally and effectively in problem and solution identification and where local communities, governments and other developmental bodies facilitate and carry out skills transfer to the younger generation who are not fortunate enough to be afforded or even to go to school.

  • MCSU works with the local Council and Ministry of education on this capacity while also working closely with both Local and International NGO working on education
  • MCSU developed a Memorandum of Understanding with all staff which clearly spells out roles and responsibilities as a way of improving teacher – child relationship. MCSU also developed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Education which clarifies each partners’ roles and responsibilities both short and long
  • MCSU works with local communities to develop the capacity of parents/individuals to play an active role in governance and delivery of education in the school. Parents Teachers Association (PTA) will be formed to ensure the school’s future MCSU’s will always dialogue with parents to support their children be in school and to contribute fees.

 

Vocational skill training

The organization is committed to the work of sponsoring Vocational educational training (Building self reliance) amongst the youth poor, needy, disabled, abandoned and vulnerable Youth, girls and women.

We are also concerned about the young girls who drop out of schools due to early pregnancies and marriages. This gave us to plan for the empowerment of all the above named target groups through training them in Vocations that give them technical knowledge and skills.

Through trainings, youth are taught different skills in Sewing and Tailoring,

PET- plastic bottle building bricks, weaving, computer applications, carpentry and joinery, Environment management, Hand Craft training, Computer training, Plumbing, Mechanics and Party Decoration, Leather tanning, entrepreneurship among others. After their training, they are expected to be able to produce good quality products leading to increase in Gross Domestic product and profitability. Secondly they will be able to effectively work in their village settings able to creating jobs among themselves.

Health

Health department is one of the most important program needed as we plan to change the living standards of people in Migadde-Kaaso zone, Gombe division with a large total population of both children and adults living in this area. In this community the nearby general health center to give medical services to people is in a distance of 6 miles. To make matters worse, this community has no a reliable transport means but mainly hire private motor cycles as Boda-Boda (Motor cycle) and use of bicycles. For so many years pregnant women and children suffer most to reach to general hospitals and its more worse when emergency cases happens in night hours. Death rate are high among pregnant women as a result of such circumstances.

Migadde-Kaaso is also among one of the slums with high number of children with serious health problems. To date there is still no community hospital established in this community. Access to healthcare services is critical to good health but children living in the slum of Migadde Kaaso encounter barriers to healthcare that limit their ability to obtain the care they need. In order for them to have sufficient and necessary access, appropriate healthcare services must be available and obtainable in a timely manner. Private clinics have set up some medical services, but it’s hard to reach the children due to financial problems.

Based on the information above, we can conclude that many unprivileged children in Migadde-Kaaso, Gombe division, Wakiso district do not get the appropriate medical support.

Milo Child Support Uganda has managed to setup a health center „Milo Health Day Care Center“ to extend better health services to the unprivileged children and women living in Kazo central zone in Wakiso district. MCSU works together with the area local leaders to provide special support to the unprivileged at free cost. The project focuses on the provision of appropriate medical- care and treatment, focusing on preventing illnesses and not only treating them. This project contributes to the improvement of the current support.

MCSU has managed to secure 5000 COVID-19 vaccination doses from our partners and so far over 3000 people have been vaccinated.

Milo Child Support Uganda has been also able to offer Health outreach programs to vulnerable children living with HIV/ AIDS and other deadly infectious diseases like pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, typhoid and Tuberculosis which have killed children in large numbers. The purpose of this Outreach is to increase access to medical services that the community, population or children in our region would not normally have and our services have played a critical role in facilitating access to primary care, case management, health education and social services to underserved populations and is about people and trusting relationships with the communities that we serve.

Water

Lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation is one of the leading challenges and cause of death among children in several communities in the Uganda. Most of the people travel to far areas looking for clean water and safe water for use, others just use water from open springs which is not safe for consumption. The use of such water has continued to cause outbreak of water born diseases among the people. These kind of diseases ends up claiming lives of the people because access to good health care remains a challenge in many rural areas due to insufficient funds to pay for heathy services.

We believe that water and sanitation crisis can be solved within our lifetimes. That’s why we’re focused on ensuring clean water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for every person in every community we work in, including the most vulnerable populations in the hardest- to-reach places.

The management of the organization has taken the initiative of putting in place deep wells and other related resources to provide proper, clean and safe water for people in the community.

This will help a lot in the reduction of distances moved by the people especially women and children to far areas in search for water, it will also reduce the out breaking of water born diseases among the people in the communities caused by use of water from open springs.

Home visits

Many Voices from near or far Places are calling for help. We have always heard incidences from different Families seeking for a Hand. Many Children suffer mentally simply because of their Family issues, for example loss of their beloved Parent/s, Medical problems, Food, uncomfortable behaviors at Homes or day to day Family difficult challenges.

MILO comes in with the ability to accurately receive and interpret their messages in a communication process, then advise and at the end we both trace for a suitable solution.

Home Visits help to establish strong, positive communication between our care givers and our sponsored target groups. They can also motivate them to get more

involved or become more involved in our activities which in the end helps them in terms of their well-being.

One of the most important aspects of home visits is that they involve our care givers into the lives of the children, women and other disadvantaged persons we support. They offer a perspective on each individual family’s struggles, what they are lacking, and what they find to be the most difficult challenges in their lives. When our team sees these harsh realities for themselves, they become better-equipped to provide each child and all other disadvantaged persons in our program with the exact support they so desperately need.

 

LETTER OF INTENT (WITH SIGNATURES)

 

 

ABOUT THE LIAISONS

Sarah and Alex Ongom are from Switzerland and founded Milo Child Support Uganda as a family-run organization After having kids ourselves, we realized how privileged they grow up compared to many other children in Uganda and with this initiative we would love to transform unprivileged communities in Uganda.

Contact

info@milo-uganda.ch

We need your help!

To be able to continue to provide this type of holistic care to the unprivileged children as well as other target groups we now serve and the many more we would love to serve, we need your continued prayers and financial support.

ABOUT MIGADDE- KAASO, UGANDA

Migadde- Kaaso, Gombe division in Wakiso District (Central Region) is a city in Uganda about 16 mi (or 25 km) north of Kampala, the country’s capital city. Places found within 5 km around Migadde include; Bibo, Kiterede, Kasozi, Lugo, Bombo and Buwembo. The city proper is estimated to have population of 630,500 people in 2019.

The Republic of Uganda is a country in East-Central Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania.

Uganda is in the African Great Lakes region. Uganda also lies within the Nile basin, and has a varied but generally a modified equatorial climate.

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