To help you understand the level of abject poverty some of our school’s pupils live in, let me introduce Letitia and her grandma. It’s 2022, much of the world lives in comparative luxury, never without basic necessities, and even home comforts taken for granted or squandered. Not so in this corner of Uganda. This kind of poverty should have been – could have been – eradicated a century ago.
We want our children to have a future, and for that they need an education. And they need to eat. They need to be able to wash in clean water, to drink clean water, to wear clothes which aren’t rags.
We have been asked whether the families might also be helped with birth control, so as to not bring into the world more mouths than they can feed, but the tragic news is that most of the families in our community are single mothers. Many of the men are drinkers who take women and girls when they want them, violently without consent. There is no family planning. There is no child support. There is no choice for these women and children.
We want to give them a choice. We want to empower them. We want them to have dignity. We want them to have happy, healthy lives.
Earlier this year, Leticia was brutally raped by a drunk man on her way home from school. This horrific experience infected her with HIV.
Now, she and her grandmother have been forcefully evicted, chased out of their home so that they’ve had to move to a different village. Here they have nothing more than the ragged clothes on their backs. It’s the rainy season, it’s cold and they are desperate for clothes, mattresses, bedding, towels and, most importantly, food. Consistent, regular meals are even more important for Letitia because she is on HIV medication, so she needs to eat more to increase her CD4 count.
A CD4 count is a blood test that measures the number of CD4 cells in a sample of your blood. CD4 cells are a type of white blood cell. They’re also called CD4 T lymphocytes or “helper T cells.” That’s because they help fight infection by triggering your immune system to destroy viruses, bacteria, and other germs that may make you sick.
Thankfully Letitia’s medication is provided for free by the hospital, and Pastor Mike collects it and delivers it to her. Though he desperately wants to do more this family, he lacks the funds and so we need you.
Please donate to LUV4ALL: Uganda’s general fund so that we can lift Letitia’s family out of their medieval living conditions. No one should have to live like this. Least of all children.
Thank you so much. God bless you.
