Ssekiddu’s Story
Ssekiddu’s Story
Meet our brother from Uganda - Ssekiddu (Se-chi-du) George is 30 years old. He was born in Uganda in the Mukono district. At age 10, Ssekiddu’s parents died, leaving him and his 7 siblings alone. With no relatives to support them, the children were evicted from their home onto the streets of Kampala.
Eventually around age 11 Ssekiddu was rescued by World Vision after they set up support in Kampala. This support provided food and education for street children, most of which were orphaned or abandoned due to medical needs. Ssekiddu received the support of World Vision for the following few years, undertaking education through them to just under a secondary school level. World Vision then left the Kampala district and Ssekiddu returned to self-survival.
Armed with enough education in the English language to be able to establish work within local trade, he spent the following years doing what he could to support other children orphaned and abandoned on the streets, while barely meeting his own needs. Over a period time, Ssekiddu had saved and become the sole carer of 10 children in his district, compelled by his own experience being saved at 10 years old, he found himself feeding and educating these children best he could.
As time passed, Ssekiddu was reunited with a childhood friend Bugingo Desire. Bugingo had also been saved from the streets of Uganda as a child and had now, as a young man set up an official organisation in Kampala- the Desire Child Care Organization (NGO), which had set up provision for street children just as World Vision had in previous years. Inspired by Desire’s endeavours and what he had achieved, Ssekiddu and his sister Ndagire decided to, in his words “start whatever we could to make a difference in the lives of the abandoned and compromised children”.
Within weeks of setting securing the empty brick shack, the 10 rescued children became 25 and from 2022 to date, a total of 42 children live there permanently, with several street children coming and going for any remaining food. Two of the children in his care have a chronic illness, several have sickle cell disease, one of the babies a heart condition.
Whilst Ndagire stays with the children in a small, vacant brick building, through the day Ssekiddu works as street vendor in Kampala city with his friend (Kyeyune), together they run a small second-hand clothes shop, travelling backwards and forward from the city to the countryside with supplies for the children.
The following extract is written by Ssekiddu regarding the current difficulty he is facing not being able to save or feed more children.
“but because of many starving kids where we rent in country side we still feeding more than 40 kids daily but we decided to stopped on those kids until we're able to take more, we got some of our kids from different streets, some are orphans and others from very poor families of single parents who can't feed them anymore and kids have to move around villages to look for what they can eat to survive.”
“Our kids goes to different schools around us 3 to 5 miles away from home where they move daily on foots and come back home that's why we have a dream to purchase our own land to build our home so that we don't rent anymore, building residential school so that kids don't have to move miles for education, put clean water, rare animals for our consumption and also to get some money for our survival. Be able to grow our own foods to avoid food shortages.”
For now, we have one caregiver which is my sister Ndagire and my friend Desire help to mentor us and advise us whilst we register ourselves as The Geornia Kids Foundation with our co-founder kyeyune Blasio Junior who has joined us.
Geornia Kids foundation is found in Mukono district, Nakifuma County, Kasowo sub county, Bugabo Village – it is in the process of registration as fully non-profit local NGO with other two directors from the UK Chantelle Knight and Jamian Khopkar."
As founding co-directors of the Geornia Kids Foundation, our hope is to use our platform, audience and reach to raise sufficient funds to realise Ssekiddu’s dream to:
- Purchase 4 acres of land £18,000
- Build a permanent home and school £30,000
- Install a water source £3,000
- Provide ongoing education for the children £1500 per term (3 terms a year) £4.500 annually.
- Provide food, medicine and basic needs, currently £600 a month
- Provide clothes for the children – available in charity bundles of 800 items for £300
- Provide books, stationary and educational resources £300 per term
- Provide bunk beds and additional blankets
- Provide toys, skipping ropes, footballs, dolls and robust outdoor games £300 each 2 months
- Support Ssekiddu’s clothes shop by sending any clothes from the UK for him to sell and increase his business and independent revenue
How You Can Get Involved
Currently we send financial support to the Geornia Kids Foundation via Remitly financial exchange, this is the quickest way to get funds to the children. As co-directors Chantelle and Jay personally fund all meals and food for the children. So far, we have also provided 10 mattresses and 20 huge blankets – the children were initially sleeping on the dusk floor with only two blankets shared between the babies. Our next step is to provide 10 more mattresses and 20 more blankets, the children also need bunk beds as the property they are currently in is very small, the mattresses are stacked up in the day and placed out a night.
As the foundation is in such early stages, there is need for everything from a loaf of bread (£0.50 donation) to a sack of rice (£5.00 donation), blanket (£10.00), mattress (£27.00), bunkbed (£40.00), or small donation to the land collection – absolutely EVERY PENNY COUNTS.
At NDL we pride ourselves on providing as much FREE information, support and resources we can – you can see our FREE webinar page. Some of our resources are chargeable, the revenue from which directly supports the Geornia Kids Foundation. You can support further by purchasing anything from our merchandise store. You can also donate on the Just Giving page for The Geornia Kids Foundation here.
On behalf of Ssekiddu and all our children at The Geornia Foundation, we thank you for your contributions to the cause.
**IF YOU ARE A BUSINESS AND ABLE TO PROVIDE AIDE RESOURCES SUCH AS CLOTHING, BOOKS. TOYS OR BLANKETS IN BULK PLEASE CONTACT CHANTELLE DIRECTLY ON 07484655459**