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Dwelling Places in Kampala, Uganda, provides ex-street children, abandoned babies, and high-risk slum families with holistic care services, including rehabilitation, education, family reconciliation and fostering.

“Until every child has a chest to rest his head on and a place to call home!”

Everywhere in Kampala street children can be seen – youngsters who, abandoned by their families, have to survive by any means necessary. The Aids crisis has exacerbated the problem, forcing many orphans to work on the streets. Children raiding bins for food, boys sniffing aviation fuel, girls as young as 13 turning to prostitution and babies abandoned in the streets are all, unfortunately, everyday sights. For some years, God had been placing the desperate needs of these children on the heart of Rita Nkemba, a Ugandan Christian and a Social Sciences graduate.  The project, Dwelling Places, founded in 2002, is her response.

Dwelling Places’s vision:
“By 2010 we will have changed the future of 33,300 children and 11,100 mothers.”

The organisation provides ex-street children, abandoned babies, and high-risk slum families with holistic care services, including rehabilitation, education, family reconciliation and fostering.  The project’s aim is to prevent the recurrence of street migration among children in Kampala and throughout Uganda.

FOR PRAYER

  • Praise God for recent answers to prayer, such as the boy whose HIV-positive status has been reversed, and the girl whose cancer was healed through prayer.
  • Finances are always tight – pray that God would bring about a sense of security in this area.
  • Pray for greater self-sufficiency and the development of the Children at Risk Institute, so that the problem of street children may be prevented rather than treated.

Over 100 children live for two years at the Dwelling Places Transitional Rehabilitiation Home, where they are fed and clothed. In the first year of their stay, the Interim School  educates them to a reasonable standard and teaches them such disciplines as wearing a school uniform and paying attention in class.  In their second year, children are placed in a local school, at the end of which Dwelling Places aims to resettle them with family members, or with a family who will adopt them.  If this is not possible, they are placed in a boarding school connected with the project.

Other aspects of work include the Family Empowerment Programme, which seeks to prevent families forcing their children on to the streets; outreach activities in the local community; and a healthcare service within the home and to the wider community.

Dwelling Places hopes to become more self-sufficient by farming land given to them.  In addition, a hostel for over-18s and an institution for the study of children at risk are also being considered.

If you wish to support this project financially, please click here.
 
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