Our Story
How it all began...
Mbarara:
In January 2022 I visited the Building Lives International children's home in Mbarara, Southwestern Uganda where I met two men, Brian and Mali, both former street boys who had been rescued from the streets and who now were rescuing others, giving them a place to call home and rehabilitating them. I had just come from the streets of the ghetto that many boys, girls and young men and women call home. Whilst at the ghetto an injured young boy appeared with blood streaming from a very nasty gash in his head. I was able to take the boy to a nearby clinic to get his wound cleaned and dressed and to pay for some antibiotics. Had I not been visiting at that moment, the only treatment available would have been to have his wound washed with dirty water. Needless to say, my heart was truly moved by what I encountered and I had only been shown the 'clean' area of the ghetto - not the part where the drug addicts and alcoholics were.
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Kabale:
A few days later I met Ian and the wonderful children in Kabale, who I had been privately sponsoring through lockdown as their families were struggling to feed them due to not being able to work. It was a joy to be with them in person as we had only been connected via video calls previously. This was a very special moment for me and we celebrated with singing and dancing with much joy and a surprising amount of interest in my hair! I had been able to support 4 of the children to attend school as day pupils and they had just started back at school after lockdown. They did not yet speak much English except for the songs Ian and I had taught them via videos during lockdown, so communication was difficult, but we sang and danced together with much gusto!
Looking Back:
Now turn the clock back to sometime in the late eighties, at a Christian youth camp in the north East of England, where a young Christian girl read a book detailing the plight of street children around the world and where God impressed on her heart a desire to help relieve the suffering that so many children experience. She was a talented musician, who wanted to work in the field of music therapy with children with special needs and was training very hard to get the qualifications necessary to enable her to fulfil this goal. Sadly, she developed repetitive strain injury whilst a music undergraduate at university and could not progress to the post graduate music therapy course due to this injury. However, her love for children remained and she trained as an Early Years teacher and worked for 20 years in mainstream and special schools, in a PRU and as an autism outreach teacher in the UK.
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Of course that young girl was me. Now, I am not so young (!), but my love for children is as strong as ever and the plight of suffering children still breaks my heart, and I can't explain it, but once you have experienced it, and your eyes are opened to the way these children live, there is no going back. It can't be ignored.
Next steps:
So, following my first trip to Uganda in January 2022 I decided that I would fundraise to help the street children in Mbarara. This was my first project - to distribute sanitary products to the girls who live in the streets of the ghetto in Mbarara. I returned to Mbarara in February 2023 and Brian and Mali kindly arranged for me to visit the church at the ghetto where the girls congregated and told me the sad, sad stories of what brought them to the streets. During this visit a firm friendship was struck up between Brian, Mali, Ian and myself which was the catalyst to forming what is now known as Building Lives International UK. Today we find ourselves at the start of a very exciting story in which we get to serve some of the most amazing children and young people. Children who, without the care and love of Building Lives International, would still be living in poverty with no education, or on the streets at risk of exploitation, harm, drug abuse, rape, the list goes on.
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We are excited for the future and would love to invite you to join us in the work we are doing by supporting us in whatever way you can. Check out our Get Involved page to see how you can!
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Many blessings, Jane
