Caritas team goes to Uganda to supervise child sponsorship programme
Most Czechs make occasional or regular donations to some form of charity. Some people go further - they adopt a child "long distance" - to give them the chance of a better life - in India, Uganda, Lithuania or Belarus. The child sponsorship project was launched several years ago by Caritas Prague, a Czech Catholic charity, and to date it has given 11 thousand children an education. The project's public relations officer Sona Reznickova has just returned from a month-long-stay in Uganda where she visited some of the young beneficiaries. We asked her to share her impressions:
"We met a lot of children, we visited many schools, and my impression is that these children are very happy and very grateful that they can go to school. They are very proud when they get their uniform because for them this is a sign that they are really going to school. They entertained us a lot. Every time we entered a school they had a song and dance programme prepared for us and we had a lot of fun with them. At the end of our journey we visited one village and we didn't have enough time to visit the school so we visited only our office in this village and when we came out of this office there were children standing and waiting for us and one child came over and said: we brought you some presents. And then we turned and saw that each of these children was holding a small present, like an egg, a small pineapple, a small papaya or a doll made from banana leaves. It was very touching, impressive...."
Could you tell me just a little bit about this photograph here? Who are these children and what village are they from?
"This is from Katete village, from our visit to their school. These children prepared a very nice programme for us. They sung a song in which they thanked Caritas and Win which is our partner organization. It was something like "We had no shoes, we had no desk, now we have shoes, now we have desk" and they ended by singing "Thank you, Czech Republic!" It was very amusing."
How old are they and what school do they go to -is there actually a school in every village?
"This is a village primary school and these children are about eight years old."
So in one class there are children of different ages?
"Yes, yes. That's very common, because in the past some children could not go to school due to a lack of money. So now they are trying to catch up and it often happens that a sixteen year old boy goes to fourth grade."
Can you tell me what difference it makes to their lives - those seven thousand crowns a year that go to pay for their education. Where would they be without it and where will they be with it?
"With this money for education these children are given the opportunity to become independent people, who can one day educate their own children and earn money in a better place than their parents who are only field hands."
If you are interested in helping to change someone's life for the better please check out the Caritas web page for more information www.charita-adopce.cz
