The Street children – Side by side with wildlife. Outreach 2011

On the 18th November 2011, Yebo supported Children living on the street and at the safe house of Raising up Hope orphanage in Uganda.

31 children aged between 4-16 years of age,  attended the day, to learn, be creative and to meet wildlife. The group are led in Uganda at the Ugandan wildlife education centre by members of staff from the centre who work tirelessly and passionately to support the projects and the children through their experiences.

The group was up by 5AM and started preparing for the day in anticipation of excitement at seeing animals, eating good food, play and creativity, and the fun of traveling away from the safe house and streets where they are living. As they made a brief clean up of the safe house, their joy increased on seeing the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre bus and started their journey at 8AM

At exactly 10AM the group  arrived at UWEC and were welcomed by the program coordinator, Isaac, who led them to the conference room, where 8 UWEC staff greeted them, and were equally excited to share the experience with them

The children were all asked to meet their expectations of the day which were:

– To see the animals

– To feed the chimpanzees

– To sing and dance

– To swim

– To eat good food

– To sleep in the dormitory

The children had a wonderful day and explored many ways to learn and to grow as people in a positive way.

During the day the children went around all of the animal exhibits at the centre, led by the UWEC staff that have been assigned to the project. The children were able to have a question and answer session on all of the animals as they went around to see them all and always focus on the chimpanzees as a point of reflection.

They were also given a lot of reflection time that was focused on having fun and experimental learning at UWEC. This is something that Yebo is aiming to achieve, allowing the children to learn in a creative and reflective way, looking at all wildlife and primates, seeing the knowledge and similarities there are between humans and the animals, and how we can protect them.

It is also an aim to allow the children to understand that they have worth in their life and that they can feel a sense of belonging, share a ray of light and be able to realise that they are able to have the same worth as any other child in the world. This is linked with the wildlife and the mistreatment that happens to animals in the wild, and the things that humans can do to protect and conserve them.

The children used their creativity and mimed, sung and danced to different local music, putting their skills and imagination into all of their achievements, and allowing their talent to show through.

Many of the children that Yebo volunteers have met in the past when out in Uganda, volunteering with the children are the talents of each individual child in so many different things. These children are incredibly intelligent and VERY talented in ways such as art, creating pieces of work such as necklaces, learning other languages from their own, designing stories and projects of their own and many more. We would love for this to be shown in the work and learning that they are doing with such wonderful local staff members at UWEC.

Breaks and lunch was provided with numerous refreshments which we fund for the children to eat well in their day. We are aware that the children do sometimes go without food where they live and we know that when they are at the centre, the food that they are given is good and nutritious for them.

An evaluation was conducted at the end of their day in pictures where they could show what they had learnt on the day, which will help at the next day the children have at the centre.

The next visit will be a Christmas party at the centre, using the same concept and giving the children a chance to celebrate Christmas in a good and positive way, aswell as achieving their aims and objectives.

We are proud to support such wonderful children, a wonderful Wildlife Education Centre and would like to pay thanks to the staff that helped the children on the day including Isaac Mujassi,Helen Atim, Meble Nabitosi, Charles Isiko, and the staff at Raising up Hope, Patrick and William.

Thank you to Yebo’s fundraising team who volunteer their time and efforts in making these days happen. We are looking forward to the Christmas party which will take place on 30th November.

Outreach projects begin this year

For those who have been keeping up to date on our projects we have now raised enough money to begin more of our outreach projects in Uganda.

This money will allow the children from the orphanage, street and safe house in Uganda to have the opportunity to have education and creative therapeutic activities around primates and other wildlife at the Ugandan Wildlife Education centre in Entebbe.

The trips over the next 6 months will consist of days at the sanctuaries and overnight camps at the centre.

Along with learning and joining in with creative activities the children are provided with good food and drinks throughout their time at the centre. This can be an important part of their trip aswell, due to the lack of food that all the children experience.

The activities out in Uganda are being run by a team of local staff from the centre. These trips and ideas were supported in the past few volunteer trips that have occurred in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Our 2011 volunteers who were out in Uganda in July, helped to initiate some of these projects and used their skills and ideas to make them work.

Please keep updated for blogs that will be posted in the next week after the children have had their first visits.

With thanks to the local bars and pubs in the local area of Guildford, Surrey, England, that have contributed to some of the fundraising that we have been doing.

Work for us in 2012!

We are looking for staff members to work in the UK and Uganda in 2012.

The roles are being developed at present but will be based on the following:

Uganda

Developing the projects out in Uganda to a higher standard, we will also be looking to employ researchers out in Uganda.

UK

Developing our fundraising team, looking at the future animal assisted therapy centre, developing the outreach animal assisted therapy in the UK with our 2 ponies.

If you are interested in any particular roles in 2012, or if you would just like to inquire then please contact us at info@yeboyes.org

The safe house

Unfortunately we found out that recently the police rounded up and imprisoned 300 children living on the streets of Kampala. 150 of these children formed part of Raising Up Hope for Uganda’s (RUHU) outreach project and we knew many personally.

The authorities claim the round up was done to help the children return to their families. However, the effects of detaining children indefinitely in holding centres across the country are disastrous. In addition to ruining the future of those that were taken criminalising these children also hurt those that are still on the streets by driving them further underground. This makes it so much harder to help and care for them.

Kajsa and K who are 2 previous volunteers from 2010 have very generously decided to help Patrick and RUHU by funding the first 12 months rent of a safe house for 70-100 children. The main priority at this stage is to create a safe environment where the children feel safe and are shielded from the daily beatings and harassment of the police so they are able to fully participate in RUHU’S outreach and rehabilitation projects

After three attempts the safe house was finally secured on 5^th July. The building has an office, a living room, two bedrooms (one for the boys and one for the girls to ensure privacy and safety), a toilet and even a shower.

As soon as the deposit was down some of the boys moved in, cared for by the older boys and Patrick. It was a joy visiting the safe house and witnessing the boys cooking, cleaning and helping each other. Today the house is home to 30 children and the number is still growing.

Nonetheless, many hurdles remain as the running of the house, the provision of food, first aid resources and educational material requires consistent funding. We cannot wait to see the house painted by the Yebo volunteers and hopefully a wall fitted to allow the girls to join as well.

Yebo hopes to continue to support and fund this project in the future and to work closely with RUHU to support these children with the work that we do.

Community and orphanage children at UWEC

On Saturday, 20 children from the orphanage and 20 from the local community that RUHU work with, along with Patrick, William and Julius – who helping the children develop their singing and dancing – came to UWEC to show the Yebo team the songs and dances they have been practising and to do some art activities with the volunteers.

In the morning, the children showed us the songs they have been learning since we last saw them. In the songs, the children sing about the environment and why they believe it is important that we protect animals and plants for the future. Hearing them sing about how they want to conserve nature was a very inspiring and moving sentiment to hear from such young children.

They also got the volunteers to join in with the dancing which everyone very much enjoyed – although the children seemed to be quite amused by some of our dancing “skills”!

After a delicious lunch of traditional Ugandan food, and a quick swim in the lake to cool off, the children collected flowers from around UWEC and together with the volunteers, and used them to make bookmarks. Despite the children never having done it before, they learnt very quickly and produced some beautiful bookmarks that will be sold at the show.

We will be seeing the children again on Wednesday and are looking forward to seeing how much further they have come with preparing their songs and dancing. Judging by the performances we saw today, it should be very impressive

The first Yebo children’s camp

11^th-12^th July – Community Children Camp

During  two days the volunteers have hosted the first Yebo children’s camp at UWEC for 20 community children. The aim of the camp was to allow the children to delve deeper into therapeutic activities and gain a better understanding of the connection between chimpanzees and humans. During the first day the children were able to closely observe the chimpanzees at UWEC by helping the keepers feed them fruit and also learn their individual stories. Play and learning was combined in a question and answer session where the children related the stories of the primates to their own backgrounds and traumas, which were often very similar.

After enjoying a nice lunch of beans, sweet potatoes and rice at the UWEC restaurant the children swam into lake Victoria for an afternoon swim before joining the volunteers in preparing the artwork for the upcoming show. Together the volunteers and children collected several boxes of shells from the beach. These will be cleaned, crushed and dyed for decoration on big plywood boards. Once the collecting of shells was done everyone sat down on the grass and engaged in therapeutic activities by drawing chimpanzees expressing particular feelings that the children themselves chose and had to explain.

In the evening, after the children had settled into their dorms and had a satisfactory dinner, a campfire was lit on the beach. The campfire started with a lot of hustle and bustle as the volunteers joined the children in playing Ugandan games, such as the cat and the rat, and singing songs in Luganda while also teaching the children the English versions. The first day of the camp concluded with a fascinating and inspiring talk about the role of rangers in national parks by Francis, the head of security at UWEC.

The second day began with a turbulent boat journey across lake Victoria to Ngamba Island, the chimpanzee sanctuary. While half of the volunteers stayed behind to continue preparing artwork, Alice, Laura, Trish, Helena, Kay and Kajsa and all the children together with Patrick braved the bad weather for two hours on a ‘slow-boat’, singing and huddling together. The aim of this trip was to give the children inspiration for conservation-focused songs to be performed during the show.

Once on the island Philip, the guide, gave the children a tour of the impressive facilities. This included a decompose toilet, a kitchen with an energy saving stove and the chimpanzee holding facilities that are used for sleeping at night-time as well as for brain-stimulating activities and research at day-time. Following this the children listened to a motivational talk by Zenox, during which they were told that they ‘will become what they believe’. This gave good results as the volunteers and the children subsequently composed a song and a poem about the importance of conserving the environment for our future.

After enjoying a lunch of peanut butter-sandwiches and biscuits the children joined the primate keepers during the afternoon feeding of the chimpanzees. This enabled a closer study of the particular behaviours of the primates in an as close to natural environment as possible. The feeding was followed by a drawing competition that saw everyone, children and volunteers alike, awarded with sweets that had been generously donated by a young German boy.

The true harvest of the first Yebo children’s camp was made visible during the boat journey back from Ngamba Island. Children, volunteers and staff all joined together to ensure that the songs fully carried forward the conservational messages that had been conveyed at UWEC and Ngamba. Meanwhile the volunteers that stayed behind had made great progress with preparing the artwork, including making the Yebo logo out of bottle labels!