Volunteers participating in this program will work at an orphanage or an orphan school. Uganda has over 2.3 million orphans, more than any other country. Many children are abandoned in various places, such as rubbish bins, latrines, taxi ranks, and roadsides. The orphans in our partner orphanages are typically newborns to around 6 years old and have no known parents or relatives. Our goal is to provide these children with love, safety, medical care, and education.
The orphanages actively seek adoptive parents for the children to give them a family upbringing. If no adoptive parents are found, the child will stay in the orphanage until they reach the age of 6, after which they may be transferred to another orphanage due to limited resources and space constraints.
The goal of this volunteer program is to offer support to the orphanage staff in various aspects of the orphanage’s development and in caring for the children. The caregivers at the orphanage have a wide range of responsibilities, not limited to childcare alone. They are also responsible for maintaining the facility and preparing meals, leaving them with limited time to provide individual attention to the children. Therefore, the volunteer’s work with each child plays a crucial role. This includes organizing games, giving them attention, attempting to teach them English and other fundamental subjects (as they have never attended school), watching over them, and assisting them with day-to-day tasks at the orphanage.
Volunteers working at orphan schools will engage in activities with the children, including games, English teaching, and sports. This volunteer program fosters a highly positive cultural exchange for both the volunteers and the children.
Example of an orphanage in Uganda:
The orphanage in Fort Portal is currently home to around 40 children, with only 3 adults looking after them. The orphanage relies entirely on volunteers to help set up the necessary operating structures to ensure that the home can continue to support the many vulnerable lives that depend on it for everything. The volunteer’s activities include looking after the children, teaching them, playing with them, interacting with them via music, teaching them about basic hygiene and feeding them. This is just one of the many orphanages with which we collaborate, and not necessarily the orphanage to which the volunteer will be assigned.
