The Mukono Baby Room
We are proud to announce the opening of the Mukono Baby Room — LWB’s newest healing home project!
The Mukono Baby Room is physically located within the Tender Hearts Baby Home on a beautiful hilltop in Mukono, a town in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda.
Tender Hearts is run by Kenneth and Cathy Nganda, native Ugandans who have a deep desire to care for orphaned and destitute children in their homeland. For over six years they have taken in children from dire situations and helped to rehabilitate them, with the goal of then reuniting them with their biological families whenever possible.
Kenneth and Cathy seek foster or adoption placements for children who are unable to be reunited with their families of origin. In their six plus years of operation, Tender Hearts Baby home has reunited over 200 children with their biological/extended families and seen more than 30 children be adopted into forever families.
An incredible 48% of Uganda’s population is composed of children under the age of 15. It is estimated that up to two million of these children are orphans, either having lost one or both of their parents.
Family and kinship ties are strong in Uganda, and many orphaned children are successfully cared for within their communities. However, abandoned children still sometimes ‘fall through the cracks’ and end up needing more intensive care in order to survive.
Some children have been terribly abused and neglected and are severely malnourished. Some are HIV positive and weak from repeated infections and illnesses. Others have special needs that make it difficult for them to live in a community where families are impoverished and unable to devote time and attention to a child with complex needs.
To further complicate matters, the rate of alcoholism is very high in Uganda, and children can suffer terribly when their parents are in the grips of substance abuse.
These most vulnerable children are who Tender Hearts aims to help, and LWB is partnering with them to help fund the care of the twelve youngest babies in the Mukono Baby Room. We have been increasing the number of nannies, funding nutritional improvements, and helping to cover the cost of any further medical treatments or hospitalizations that the babies may need. In the future, we hope to help expand foster care and family reunification projects.
LWB volunteer Christina Lindseth visited Uganda in February 2017 and fell in love with Tender Hearts and the children who live in the Baby Room. We are pleased that Christina is coordinating this partnership!
Tomorrow we will feature Vera, a beautiful baby in need of sponsorship.
This program is new, and we have just a few sponsors so far. We truly need people to stand with these babies who are in such need of hope and healing.
We hope that like Christina and all of us, you will also fall in love with the children at the Mukono Baby Home!
