About

Welcome to Destination Uganda, a personal insight to starting and running a children’s home in Africa.  This blog is a journal of personal experiences of Kathryn and David Guinea, whilst they’ve been working with children in Kabale, Uganda. We are involved with DESTINATIONS which was established in Brisbane, Australia for the purpose of helping needy children around the world. See www.destinations.org.au for more information on DESTINATIONS.

Please feel free to read and comment on our posts.  We have had a few people ask for more details of our work so we have summarised what has happened from the beginning to where we are today, March 2009.

2005

June/July: A team was led to Kampala, Uganda to build a home for a similar organisation to ours, Watoto Children’s Ministries.  Funds were raised by the team of 12 people and then they went to Uganda and built the home.

2006

October: David & Kathryn Guinea, with Phillip Hollands Jr, went to Kampala, Uganda to attend a conference about helping needy children in Africa and then they visited Kabale to meet with leaders of Victory Community Care Services to look into partnering to start a home for children in Kabale.

2007

January: A formal partnership was set up between Taigum Community Church, Brisbane, Australia and Victory Community Care Services, Kabale, Uganda to start a children’s home aimed at helping orphaned and endangered children in the Kabale district.

May: A team was sent from Australia to assist in the work (David & Kathryn Guinea, Quinton & Erica Siddans, with daughter Amelia, and Phillip Hollands)

July: July saw Akanyijuka Children’s Home started, opening on July 2nd with six children, two matrons and a  nursery teacher/administrator.   The way it was set up was to have matrons live on site and become a mother to the children, living in separate houses, each with eight children.  We saw this as a better option for the children rather then a dormitory style home.  We started with two matrons having three children each and having informal nursery classes for the remainder of the year.

December: By the end of the year we had 4 matrons and

2008

January: Akanyijuka Nursery & Primary School was officially opened along with a Head Master and two other teachers.

June:  During May there was an opening for us to take on another matron and therefore in June to take in another 6 children, by October we had 5 matrons, 3 full time teaching staff and 40 children!!

September:By this time we had taken in our final two children, purchased our first piece of land for the building of a purpose built facility, a little bit outside of town.  There are plans to build two storied buildings for the school, teachers quarters, and houses for the children and matrons.

October: We started our first major farming project - chickens.  Both layers and broilers were purchased.  The layers are still going well to this day.  The broilers went well, but there is need for a deep freezer to be purchased before they can be reared to gain maximum benefits.

December: Two blocks of the land were cleared and leveled, ready for building.

2009

The end of 2008 was a break in progress while David & Kathryn Guinea were overseas visiting family.  Great things are planned for the year ahead.