Staying Alive: Small Projects in the Pandemic

By Josephine De Freitas

As the COVID19 pandemic spread across the world, it brought lockdown, unemployment and poverty in its wake. For many children in developing countries it was especially hard; schools closed and children missed both education and in many cases, their main daily meal. Our projects had to scramble to find ways to help the most vulnerable survive. Thanks to your on-going donations we have been able to make a small difference to many.

Supporting Hungry Children 

Many of our projects have turned to providing food aid to the most vulnerable children and families. Project Smiles, in Uganda, is feeding the families of their poorest students this year. Stand Tall School, also in Uganda, has sent food packages to their neediest families, to help them survive. Uno a Uno in Ecuador, are helping their students by supplementing their food supply. In Zambia, we provide food aid through the Vincent de Paul School to feed the children who would otherwise go hungry. We also provide food for some of the community’s seniors.

Volset Orphanage and School in Uganda

During the lockdown, the school had to be closed and most of the children went home to relatives. A total of 15 orphans and staff remained. With the school closed, there was no income to support these children, so we sent funds to ensure they had food, medicines and other essentials. We also helped the school upgrade to add hand-washing facilities and other hygiene measures. This will allow the school to re-open next month and hopefully get back to normal for 2021.

Community Projects in Haiti

All the youth projects had to be cancelled in Haiti this year, however, funds have been used to buy food for some of the neediest families in the community who have lost their income.

Gardens 

The community garden in Nepal is providing some much needed vegetables for the neediest families in the village. The three school gardens in Uganda are still enthusiastically tended despite the schools being closed.  They produce enough vegetables to provide a surplus to sell.

Grassroots Doctors

This project was unable to conduct the usual face to face workshops, due to the pandemic. The project leader, Kate Wootton, got around this hurdle by organizing webinars from Canada. These were enthusiastically received at Mbarare University and were so successful that I believe they will continue long after the pandemic has faded.

Making Masks

The community in Zambia has made thousands of cloth masks and distributed them to schools and clinics in the area. Working with the village chiefs, there have been numerous workshops teaching about covid 19 and how to prevent it.

Please consider donating to these projects this year, even a tiny amount of support can go a long way in easing the hardships of the pandemic.