Kasana Children's Center....placing the fatherless in families

This has been my morning alarm every day here at New Hope....about 5:45 each morning a wheelbarrow full of jerry cans would roll by our window on the way to fetch water.

All of the children who live here are put in family groups of approx 20 kids that have a "father" who oversees, directs, leads, loves on the kids.  Each New Hope staff person is assigned to one of the family groups, so they join them for devotions, occasional meals, help the kids with homework, family celebrations, etc.  All of the kids have chores to help keep things running smoothly...gathering firewood, fetching water, cooking, cleaning, etc.  These kids work hard, and have a very structured routine and disciplined life, with lots of fun mixed in (soccer games, corn roasting, game nights, etc.) The whole property is set up like the spokes of a wheel with the school & church in the middle, and 7 "spokes" (roads) leading out to each of the 7 family groups.  Those are set up like little villages....with a central meeting banda (hut) for meals and devotions, then all the little bandas around it for sleeping, a "kitchen", chicken coop, gardens, etc. It is an amazing concept that is so different than the dormatory model for most orphanages.  Each family group raises all their own food, tends their garden, gathers and stores their harvest, etc. The kids take turns cooking, they all help with cleaning, slashing ("mowing the grass"), "digging" (hoeing weeds in the garden), etc.  This is giving the kids real life skills for becoming indpendent citizens in this culture...so they can know how to be self-sufficient and provide for their own families someday.  That is one reason sponsorship is so cheap here (only $30) because they grow their own food and live very primitively so they don't need all the "extra" supplies like paper towels, cleaning supplies, etc....they just use all the traditional natural methods.  Potholders and paper towels are banana leaves, fingers are forks, etc.  But if the family groups were given all the “extras” bought from a store, they would be living in an unrealistic lifestyle mode that they would not be able to maintain after they graduate from New Hope and become adults out in the real world.  The goal of New Hope is to prepare them for rural village life here in Uganda….here at Kasana they ARE living “in the real world”.  After they leave here they will be able to maintain this same lifestyle they were raised in, or better.  But at least they are not being raised in a manner that they will not be able to maintain or keep up with when they become adults.  Before they graduate they go through an Investment Year program (phenomenal!!!) that teaches them life skills, gives them 3 internship experiences to explore career interests/options, exposes them to city life, how to use public transportation, they have to start and maintain their own business, read through the Bible in a year, etc. Some graduated students go onto New Hope vocational school to learn a trade and some go on to University to earn a degree.  Some do move to the city (Kampala) and live in a nicer house, some continue the rural village life.  None of them end up in a worse/poorer/lesser lifestyle than what they were raised in here at New Hope. All of them are still a part of the Kasana family, are always welcomed back for holidays and family celebrations, etc.  It is truly an amazing way of life and a stellar philosophy that New Hope operates on….God really gave the founders a lot of wisdom and forsight.

About 140ish kids live here on the property in the family groups and another 300ish that walk in for school every day from the surrounding villages.  So 4 of the kids we sponsor live here in family groups.  It has been fun to join each of them for their devotions, meals, games, chores, activities, just hanging out, etc. We of course, have gotten to spend more time with those 4 than the other 6 who live out in the villages...we try to spend every spare chance we get with our kids.  After lunch we always run over to the school to at least greet the other day students on their lunch recess.  Joey has gotten to see them lots since he's been working at the Primary School all day.  It is going to be sooo hard to say goodbye to them!  I can't believe our time in Africa is coming to an end....Saturday we are having a get together with the 5 boys and then Sunday with the 5 girls.  We have to bring closure and say goodbye on Sun evening becuz Mon/Tues we are on safari and then Wed. early morn we leave for the airport with our team (we fly out 24 hrs after them, so our fam will be hanging out at a hotel next to the airport with a nice pool where we can rent a cabana for the day, order pizza, hot showers before we get ready to go to the airport...nice relaxing way to end the trip. 
Will try to post more pictures, but we haven't had any electricity to recharge the laptop.