Hope Again Medical Clinic is a project of Bringing Hope to The Family. The medical Clinic is fully registered with the Ministry of Health and works hand in hand with the district health department and Baylor Uganda to offer medical treatment to the local communities and support to the HIV/AIDs positive people especially the orphans and their caretakers. The Clinic offers free treatment to all the HIV/AID positive orphans and free HIV/AIDs testing and counseling to the public. The medical Clinic serves 597 women, 298 men, and 365 children below the age of 17 (most of the children are orphans), for a total of 1,260 HIV/AID positive clients.
Baylor Uganda and the District Health Unit provide the ART treatment while BringingHope to the Family offers free HIV/AIDS counseling and testing services, treatment for opportunistic infections, pays for X-rays, and scans. The medical clinic also offers treatment to other people in the community, but mainly it exists to provide services to the HIV/AIDS patients in the community. The children tested are between the ages of 6 months and 17 years, the majority are school going OVC and still need medical and educational support.
Many of the people that were living positive were not sure of their status. In the last 14 years of the existence of the medical clinic, we have been able to screen more than 25,000 people for HIV/AIDs and we today have a Positive living clientele of about 1700 people, of which majority of them are Children, A lot of children have been rescued from death by providing treatment and transport to the clinic. Quality available health service (laboratory, Antenatal, HIV/AIDs Clinic), qualified medical personnel reduced on the community purchasing and seeking medical assistance from unqualified community outlets that sell medicines.
Home Again has been one of Bringing Hope to the Family’s longest running departments. With a population of 95 children and a staff of 8 people, Home Again Children’s Home is a place for children in our community who have been abandoned, left alone without relatives, or chased from their homes after the death of their parents. Most of the children come to the home while in a sorrowful state that it takes some time to rehabilitate them. The Home has children from the age of 2months to the age of 17 years. Home Again provides a safe, loving, christian environment for orphaned and vulnerable children.
Home Again also provides these children with the opportunity to attend nursery, primary and secondary schools. Many of the children also have the opportunity to attend university. Home Again desires to educate and inspire these children to break the cycle of poverty in their lives and raise them up to be leaders and Godly examples in their communities.
This institute was started to address the challenges faced by the orphans who were dropping out of school due to sickness of their parents. After the death of their parents, they failed to go back to the formal education system, and so they opted to go to work or to get married. The organization offers these OVC skills in tailoring, hair dressing, business communication, carpentry, welding, business English, basic agricultural practices, knitting and craft, brick laying and concrete practice, and general knowledge. The vocational school has graduated more than 400 girls, 80 boys in the last 12 years.
Currently, there are 78 girls and 25 boys in New Hope Vocational Training Institute. These girls and boys will require support and startup kits to be able to go out and be self-reliant. Most of these OVCs have lost their parents and cannot afford to pay for their school dues or provide basic needs to sustain them at the school. This remains a challenge to the organization as well as the OVC themselves.
Bringing Hope to the Family saw a need for a nursery and primary school for the children at Home Again Children’s Home. So in 2007, BHTF established Hope Academy nursery and primary school to offer quality education to the Home Again children and the community. Kaihura community by then, only two government primary schools which were over populated yet the organization had a number of children with a lot of disabilities academically which the government schools never gave attention too hence the establishment of Hope Academy.
The school is well known for good discipline among the students and the teachers, good academic performance, good at athletics, high level of confidence among the students. Currently Hope Academy has a population of 305 students for both the boarding and day sections with a fully equipped library, and well vanished classrooms.
The organization provides the families where the majority of the orphaned children live with agriculture programs that create sustainability for their families. They are taught how to plant food, and how to care for cows, goats, chickens, and are given training in modernized agriculture methods.
Families are given psychosocial skills to help them to handle the children under their care. Often the caretakers of orphans are stressed due to the many challenges they go through every day, psychosocial support helps them to better handle the day to day challenges.