angelofafrica Children's Foundation: REACH 2 TEACH

Thursday, March 1, 2012

REACH 2 TEACH

I am starting a new reading and writing program in Kampala Uganda for the street children and orphans ranging from 4 to 16 years old, I would be so happy if anyone would like to donate pencils, pens, paper, books, and any school supplies, and shipping to this effort. Contact me at: angelofafrica22@gmail.com
Thank you for your donations including funding this great effort for the children.

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Street Kids Assessment

Our aim with the street kids is to interact, assess, and interview them. This activity will be carried out on the streets of Kampala city.

The purpose of this assessment is to find out information about the street children, their interests, future plans, challenges, educational back ground and many more. This information will help the organization in its implementation stage, as it will be used to find out the most pressing problems faced by the kids. This will help us establish the problems that need to be handled immediately; it will also help us in trying to flow up the kids in case of enrollment. It is on this background that we have organized this assessment. It will involve all our members reaching out to the kids, and we hope to reach out to 30 kids both female and male.

Overall purpose
The overall propose of this is to help us find out the challenges facing the kids and also to help the AngelofAfrica Children's Foundation (AACF) team to identify themselves with the kids.

The activity
Our members will go out to the kids, introduce themselves and create an environment suitable for them and the kids to have a chat. They will ask for the consent of the kids to keep their information or particulars in writing and also explain the reason for our assessment. After the assessment our members will direct the kid tour station were we will be doing a registration and photo taken if possible and also a snack and a drink issued to the kid. And after the assessment the data collected will be complied to make the general report.

Objectives:
> To equip our members with skills in handling and interacting with the kids.
> To find out the different challenges facing the street kids.
> To acquire information about the kids, mainly their particulars.

Objective 1: To equip our members with skills in handling and interacting with the kids.
Here the members will first have a discussion amongst them selves on the best way of handling the kids with the help of some of them who have acquired the experience in working with them, and also the activity its self will help build their confidence and make them familiar with the kids.

Objective 2: To find out the different challenges facing the street kids.
Here we will have to ask the kids what their challenges are either on the streets, at home if they have any or any others even if they are not connected to their street life. We will also try and find out what they think should be done to help them over come the different challenges they face. The data collected here will help us in choosing the most pressing challenges that need immediate attention than handling some which may not have much impact at the moment.

Objective 3: To acquire information about the kids
Here we will get the particulars about the kids which will include name, age, tribe, religion, parent’s names street of residence and home if any. This information will help in following up these kids in case we need to enroll them in our programs.
Area of focus:
Under this assessment we are going to focus mainly on acquiring information and particulars of the kids to help us flow them up.
We are also focusing on finding out how these kids need to be helped and how we can extend our help to them in a better and unique way
-- Frank Balamaze, Administrator, AngelofAfrica Children's Foundation

Positions in angelofafrica's Children's Foundation

Our Foundation is growing! Some wonderful people have offered their time and effort and experience to serve in helping the street children and the orphans. Without further ado, here are their names:

Angelofafrica's Children's Foundation
Founder/Director and Information Resource Manager: Angel Jeannene

Chief Advisor and Honorary Co-Founder: Robert Magezi

Administrator: Frank Balamaze
General Secretary: Leilah Shafiat
Operations Manager / Coordinator: Ofwono Opondo
Financial Controller: Angel Jeannene
Film and Editing: Siraji Hassan
Orientation Trainer: Mark Okello Godfrey
Music Trainer: Ofwono Opondo
Drama Trainer: Ofwono Opondo
Dance Trainer: Angel Jeannene
Teacher: Frank Balamaze & Samson Kiseka (TRW School)

Teacher: Angel Jeannene (TRW School)

Teachers of Music: Isaac Lasu , Eric Milken
Group Organizer For Music: Eric Molken Nsimbe
Camera & Media: Gilbert Frank Daniels
Teacher of Journalism: Gilbert Frank Daniels
Food Collector: Solomon Mulasa
Food Distributor: Solomon Mulasa
Peformer, guitar & keyboard Teacher: Isaac Lasu

Orphanages associated as Working Partners with angelofafrica Childrens Foundation:

SPYOWE (Support Program for Youth, Orphans, Widows, and the Elderly)
Founder - Director: Robert Magezi

African Child in Need
Founder - Owner - Director: Milton Opoya

Thank you again, my friends, for opening your hearts and stepping up to help the orphans and the street children to the glory of God and for the benefit of the future of Uganda. God bless you!

ANGEL’S DREAM FROM GOD OF HELPING CHILDREN IN AFRICA

About 4 months after I lost my husband Walter, I began having a recurring dream. What was most unusual was that the dream started out as an ordinary, but very nice dream, and then repeated and extended itself, like a movie that is paused and then restarted, each time getting longer and longer, but all the while showing the same exact scenes and characters.
I had this dream two to three times a week, most weeks, although there times where I had a week off … as if to rest.
The dream was in color and looked like a movie.
And it was all through my own eyes, as if I was actually there, walking where I was walking, meeting who I was meeting, and doing what I was doing Each time I had this dream, it started from the very beginning, and something new was added to the end.
And that is how my brain learns best: by repetition, so I guess God knew I needed that, because this dream was not just a movie, it was an instructional video, showing me what I was supposed to take with me.

The dream:
I find myself walking in a field, on red dirt clay – plain dirt, earth, with cracks in it. There is a man walking beside me on my left. He is tall – my head comes to his shoulders – and he is a black man. He is dressed in traditional African clothing.
His clothing is a pale blue, the shirt is long, reaching to mid-thigh, with long sleeves, and has a V-neck, with trim sewed into the “V”. The ankle-length pants are the same color, both made of light weight cotton. His toes stick out of his leather sandals.
I’m wearing a traditional African blouse and skirt, in white. My blouse has a tie at the neck. I’m wearing tennis shoes, and a belt made of colored brown beads. I don’t understand my shoes: they are like tennis shoes, made of canvas, but the toes stick out, like sandals, and the soles are brown leather. I find myself surprised that my shoes are not red from the color of the earth I’m walking on.
As we are walking toward a canopy of tent material, part of it is open on one side, but there is a wall of tent material on the back side. There are people there, standing in line by a table, on the side where there is shade.
Tables – they are so long, I cannot tell where the table ends, because one after another are lined up end-to-end such that they make one table that is very long. All are covered in white table cloths, and I cannot understand why, because I would think they would show all the red dirt.
As we walk up to the tent, there are children coming up to me in route to the tent.
Many, many more were coming to the tent, from every direction, walking across the barren red earth. Children of all ages, coming from everywhere. Basically, if they could walk, they were there. And every one of them has in their hands anything they could find to substitute for a bowl or a plate.
Children are also hanging onto every part of my skirt and sleeves, as we walk to the tent, surrounding me completely as if I had suddenly been elected the Fairy Godmother of half of Africa. It was … strange: pleasant, yes, but very strange.
What struck me most was that they were so happy! All of them were just thrilled that someone – anyone – would show up to pay attention to them: to feed them and to talk with them. They seemed to have been starved both for food and for love for so long, that when someone – anyone – finally showed up to fill their bellies and their hearts out of simple human kindness, that all the love they should have given to their parents over the space of years now shined out of their faces in this moment. And because I happened to be there in white, all that love was directed at me, like I was some angel come from God just to answer their specific prayers, when in my heart I know I'm just one little woman trying her best. It was quite completely overwhelming.
Tears poured down my face, for joy.
I had no idea that there were so many children in so much need, until I saw it with my own eyes. When I looked upon these very, very thin children, they were so dirty, I doubt many had had a bath in a long, long time, and may have not had anyone to care properly for them in years. To say the least, they were all unkempt, and wearing torn clothes. Their little fingers and toes and hands and arms were so dirty!
The red dirt under all their fingernails was deeply impacted, as if they had been digging with their fingers to find some root to eat, and they were all like this, except for a few! There were some who came who had better clothes and were nearly clean in this land of red dirt, so I assumed they had someone watching over them. Yet still, they were thrilled to get a good, solid meal.
There were children with burns on the skin of their arms and legs. I had no idea how they got the burns, but it was so painful to see, I can imagine how that felt, once I had been burned, so I knew it really hurt so much; also I had a family member who had their fingers burned: she cried for days from the pain.
A lot of the chlidren were speaking in different languages. All are trying to talk to me at once. Some are just calling out “Angel, Angel”. Some call out something I understand: “Stories! Stories!”
The man that was walking to the left of me is holding my left hand the whole time. I remember looking up at him in shock, as if to say to him “Wow! These are a lot of kids!”
All I can do at that point is smile at him, and hope we all have enough food for these kids! He squeezes my hand as if to say “It’s okay, I love you.”
I turn my head to the right, and there is a very thin woman dressed in traditional dress and head gear, with her scarf wrapped around her head. The clothing she is wearing is green, with white flowers. She is walking near us, and behind us, to the tent. I remember her walking up, amazed that she was not walking with the man.
In the dream, as we approach the tables, I see these enormous bowls, made of some type of earthenware pottery. Each one over two feet in diameter, and over a foot deep, these bowls extend down the joined tables for a long, long way.
As I look back on it, I know there has to be a specific number of bowls, assuming the tent and the bowls are real – and since seeing this dream over and over and over and over for months, I’ve since discovered reasons to believe that the facts are to occur just as they were shown me. (We’ll get to that later as I move on now in this story of my dream.)
Even so, as I look back on it, the length of the table and the unending bowls, I believe, are symbolic indications of how many we are to help, and how far reaching this ministry is to be. (And that makes me wonder how long I may be in Africa.)

Okay – the bowls: Since meeting people on the internet and doing research on Uganda, I have since discovered that those bowls do, in fact, exist in Reality. They are traditional Ugandan bowls, made of the native red clay earth – and they commonly are made that big, and are still made in Uganda. So this is not just something my mind made up in the middle of the night: These are quite real.
Now there are water vases on this table. They are about 2 feet high, and 1 foot around, made more like a vase, with a ripple design that rises all the way up to the very top, where there is a hole that is the spout, they have these little fist-like knobby knots protruding from the water vases, which help you hold on to them, as you pour the water out. They are painted in dark brown.

Back to the dream:
As we approach the table, there are many adults behind the table, getting ready to serve the children. At this point, I tell the children around me to get in line.
I ask the adults if the little children who did me the honor of coming out to greet me, rather than just piling into line for food, could be the first to be served. They all shook their heads, “Yes.”
As all these many, many children -- plus anyone who wanted food -- are being fed, they are not shoving or pushing. They treat one another with respect and love. I think the reason is that they saw that there was enough for all.
In the bowls are so many different kind of food: each seemed to have its own kind of food. If it was bananas, it was bananas. If it was oranges, it was oranges. If it was beans, it was beans. If it was any kind of vegetable, or any kind of fruit, it was just that one thing in that bowl.
Some bowls have some kind of oatmeal-like corn mush that is dipped out with a ladle (spoon). Some have a kind of cooked potatoes, made from a root.
Since having the dream, I’ve heard that Africa has gray yams that make a potato-like food, and I have recently had people in Uganda telling me they are eating what they call “African mash” which in America would be called “fried corn bread” or “squaw bread”.
As I look into the memory of the dream, there is a flat, white bread, which looks like it had been baked in an outside oven. It looked something like pita bread, baked light brown on each side.
Oddly enough, I don’t see much meat. I see green, leafy vegetables, but no fish, no beef. One bowl per table may have something that included chicken.
It takes hours to feed all these children. After everyone goes through the line, and sits in their spots to eat, and seems to be full, the children begin to come up and yank on my sleeves and say “Story! Story!” again. Someone interprets to those who did not speak English that I’m about to tell the children stories.
As the sun is going down, people are beginning to build fires for light and warmth. I ask them what stories they want to hear, and they reply, “Anything! Anything!”
So I begin to tell them about myself, and why I had come to them; and I told them some things about my life as a little girl.
After doing that, I tell them some stories I have read in the Bible, and about people, lands, and countries. I even tell them stories about fairies, something they had never heard about before. At this point, some of them began telling stories of their own, about their people, about their folklore.
It is interesting to learn of their culture.
People are happy and joyful, and singing, and dancing African dances. I even get up and dance with them, it is so exciting.
I feel I learned much about their people. It is as if we are one huge, huge family.
You see, it’s not about who we are, it is about what we can do for others. I was shown that the children and I will travel many places to perform our shows. I see in the dream that there are many helping us: singers, dancers, breakdance groups, performers; all helping my kids. They are called, “African Child In Need, Angel’s Performing Kids Changing The World”
My dream continues: I see places I will go, people I will see, and wherever I travel I take photos and videos, and I listen to people as I walk from place to place. and travel from one village to another. The stories of their lives, and how it use to be, how they lived, what happened in their lives weaves a beautiful tapestry of human experience. I talk to sooo many people.
I was shown places I will live, and work, and I even saw love. Angel finds LOVE. She finds it in all the lovely people in Uganda.
In the dream, I was shown all the things that God wants me to accomplish while I’m to be there. I’m to teach the children at this orphanage all the fine arts: dancing, singing, performing, art, photography, drama, how to set up a stage; even health issues about cooking, and about hygiene, and even English classes. We are making clothing to sell, and doing all sorts of things to fund the older children’s vocational training in learning trades and making crafts, rather than just dumping them out on the world unprepared to make a living.
God even went as far as showing me all the things that I would need to make this dream come true. I was shown that I will need camera’s, cams, video supplies, a computer, the know-how to make movies, and even the certain type of machine (which really exists – to my surprise!) used to mass produce DVD’s & CD’s just by hooking it up to a laptop.
Next, I was shown in the dream that the money that we make on the shows and our DVD’s and CD’s will fund the orphans’ education, so that they can have a bright future, and will not go without food, clothes, and such basic needs.
I was even shown that I was to write biographies of the people I get to meet all over Uganda, in order to write them down and make a book. This book is to get the word out that there is a place called, “THE PEARL OF AFRICA”, and her name is Uganda!!! Uganda!!! And the proceeds, of course, fund the children’s educations. God gave me many such ideas.
In my dream I was shown that one day in Kampala, there will be our first show: we will be walking down the main street of the city with banners made by the children. Our show is about to a start at the theater. We are singing and dancing and many are there to show support: cheering us on, ‘til we reach the theater. People from all over the city come and sit down to see and hear our children and friends perform. What a sight it is: the clapping, the joy on people’s faces, the wonderful laughter! Everyone is having so much fun…! People want to see more, and everyone tells us that they were truly blessed by the performances.
There is more to my dream, but these are the main points of the dream. All I can say is when I sell my house I will be coming there to fulfill my dream, and to do as I was shown in my dream.
You know, when we are born, we all given a chance to do something, not just for ourselves, but for others. We can make lives richer and fuller with our love and understanding.
In preparing to sell my house, I’ve been cleaning out the 100 or so boxes of stuff I accumulated over the years I lived in my five bedroom house. You know, there’s a lot of people out there that are very rich, yet buy the most foolish things: things they don’t need to be full, or happy. They just buy it thinking it that it will make them feel better. (And I was one of them.) Just think, if everyone didn’t buy all this junk, the money would feed mass populations; and I could already have finished this work, without having to put so much stuff into a yard sale!
To go out and serve others, even if it is in our spare time, or give even more with what we do have is not foolish. Neither is it merely a pipe dream. It is human. And if this dream is from God – a fact which I do not question – then it is Divine.
Thank you for reading the story of the dream God sent me, and for remembering my children.
* * *
A continuation of this dream came a few weeks ago. God showed me in this dream:
I saw myself walking down the main City Centre street of Kampala. With me were all the children that had been trained in performing arts. We were there to do a show at the National Theatre that day.
I saw many children carrying three long banners, stretching across the street. On the banners it said: We will be performing, dance, drama, singing, and many different kinds of arts. Please come and see our show, it starts at 7pm.
People were watching us come down the street. They were yelling “Yes, we’ll be there, we want to see the show!” and cheering us on. Others were standing there befuddled, not knowing exactly what was going on. A few days earlier, we had handed out leaflets about the show.
The price for the show was $2 and children get in free.
I could see in the dream that the people who were sitting in the audience were enjoying the show so much: they were cheering and laughing, and clapping, as if they had never seen these kind of shows before in their lives.
I had told the children: “It doesn’t matter if one person shows up, or if a hundred show up, the show will always go on” because that is how people know that they can depend upon the show to be there for them, and because that is how a show builds word of mouth advertising.
I had told them, “Don’t worry about who is sitting in the audience, just do your job, … and have fun. And the show must go on.”
What we want to teach the children is all performing arts, such as:
• Dance – jazz, contemporary, ballet, tap, hip-hop, and breaking
• Singing
• Drama – poetry, scripts, short plays that they will act out themselves
• Costuming – sewing, design
• Hair & Stage makeup
• Set Design
• Sound, Stage, & Lighting
• Camera –photography, video, editing, making CD’s & DVD’s
• English – projection and pronunciation
And additional arts and crafts, such as:
• Basic basket making
• Basic jewelry making
• Hair cutting
• Sewing
• Wood working
• Welding
• Basic construction
• Basic sales
What we want to teach the adults as well:
• Sanitation
• Dietary health
• Cooking
• Soil conservation
• Soil fertilization

Obviously, we’re going to need a LOT of help! It will be something where everyone has to want to make Uganda better.

To make the funds to launch all this, we need to start: Day Care Center
Internet Café
Performing Arts Studio
Store to Sell the Crafts
Website for donations from around the world

Thursday, March 1, 2012

REACH 2 TEACH

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Street Kids Assessment

Positions in angelofafrica's Children's Foundation