News from the House of Jjajja Don

As you may know from my trip to Uganda in April of this year, my wife and I adopted 13 young girls from the streets of Kampala who were engaged in the commercial sex trade. We offered to rent a home for them if they agreed to live together and take care of one another. I recently heard from the social worker at St Kizito that a young women who's home we had visited was located and identified. The other girls unanimously agreed to invite her to our family so we have grown to 14 girls.

This weekend I received the following email from the social worker,. "The house has been found and we are waiting for the owner to come back and we will negotiate the terms of payments" What great news!

Fr Gerald wrote me a few weeks ago with news of the girls health status, "

Dear Don!

Greetings

from your God-daughters after meeting them on 12 July 2011 in my little office. All of them had gone for a medical check up and tests for HIV/Aids and Syphilis were taken. Only one girl reported to me that she was tested and found to be HIV/AIDS positive. She has started taking ARVs, but with no syphilis. Eight girls reported to me that they did neither have HIV/AIDS nor Syphilis. Three girls needed some medical attention or treatment, but have not yet reported to me to go for the treatment." The parish is also working on developing a school for tailoring and computer sills development in the Youth Centre OLGC helped to construct. They plan to have 30 commercial sex workers trained in the next two years so that they can have productive skills to earn a living. My daughters wrote me and said they had all left the streets and the work they were doing. They now carry water pails, clean houses, babysit during the day for working parents and all kind of small jobs to earn a living. It will be so good to have them all together in the same place soon.. God is good---all the time!