A Ugandan step mother who defys the sterotypes

We had a great time yesterday visiting Josephine and her family.  Josephine got resettled back in July 2011 with her father, step mother and 7 siblings.  Another sibling has been born since then.

I took the photograph below of Justine when we went to visit them for the first time earlier in July 2011 when we were discussing Josephines future.  I will never forget how happy and welcoming Justine was to us that day and when we asked her how she considered Josephine, she answered "she is my daughter". We were all really impressed with how she interacted with her other step daughters at the time and we witnessed  first hand just how much they all appeared to love each other.

We had high hopes that it would be a successful resettlement and so far we have been proved right.

Justine is a hairdresser and last year we helped get her a grant which she used to buy hair dressing equipment.  However, she now needs help in getting start up capital to rent a property to work from and to also buy a much needed sit under hairdryer.

Justine needs £195/$314 to pay for the 3 months advance rent on a hair salon and for the large hairdryer.

We are always working towards helping the families on our project to become self sustainable and we are hoping that in economically empowering Justine that it will really help the family to sustain themselves in the long term.

Currently, her husband works as a teacher and although he gets two free school places for two of his daughters, all his salary is used to pay their house rent.  As you can see, they really need to earn more money to look after their family.

Reunite would really like to help pay for the school fees for four of the daughters in this family for the next school year until Justines hair dressing business really takes off and they can hopefully be completely self sustainable.  We will review this term by term.

The daughter below is 13 years old and she is hoping to join S1 next month.  Her school fees are £57/$92 for one term/semester.

Her older sister is 15 years old (she wasn't at home that day) and she is hoping to join S3.  Her school fees are the same - £57/$92.

This little girl below is hoping to join P3 and her school fees are £41/$67 for one term plus £7/$11 for meals.

And we are really excited that Josephine below will be starting school for the first time and is hoping to join kindergarten. Her school fees are £34/$55 for one term plus £7/$11 for meals.  Josephine will also need a school uniform which will cost £10/$16 plus school shoes and a bag.

If anybody is interested in helping to contribute towards the current financial needs of this family, you can donate by clicking the link  HERE .  They need to pay the school fees in the next two weeks, so if you are going to help, then please help now.

Thank you for reading and for caring for this inspirational family.  It is a blessing to know them and to be able to help support them to support themselves.