Joan, 33, runs a business making and selling clay wood stoves, which are common cooking devices in her community. She sees a lot of potential in the business and is taking steps to expand her activities. She will use her loan to buy spades, a wheelbarrow, hoes, and raw clay production materials. With more modern tools and materials, she will be able to make more stoves in less time, increasing her profits. Joan is married and a mother of two (ages 12 and 5). She… Read More
Loan Christine Funds for a Wood Cutter Machine
Christine, 47, makes a living producing and selling charcoal. She will invest the loan funds into a wood cutter machine and sacks so that she can expand her production. Christine is a widow single-handedly caring for four children (ages 14 to 22) and three siblings. Before setting up her own business, she worked for someone else as a porter. Now she feels that by working harder, she can take control of her own earnings. The loan will help her to expand her business and start… Read More
Help Margaret Diversify Her Food Sales Business
Margaret, 46, makes a living selling various food products. She will invest the loan money into her business to diversify her activities. She will buy cooking oil, onions, rice, salt, and other necessary ingredients. Margaret is a married mother of five. Three of her five children still go to school and will need some support for the years to come. She also often cares for her grandchild (pictured). Her loan will enable her to gradually grow her business and start saving money for the future. Margaret’s long-term… Read More
Help Anna Buy Two Cell Phones
Anna, 37 has two jobs: she is the village midwife, and she also runs a phone kiosk in her village. With the loan funds she will buy two mobile phones and pre-paid phone cards. This will help boost her business. Anna is a widow and a sole supporter of her five children. Her children are ages 9 to 20, and the two oldest have finished school. She also supports her elderly mother. In the mornings, she works at the village clinic and in the afternoons… Read More
Loan Anna Funds to Buy Charcoal in Bulk
Anna, 47, makes a living selling charcoal in her community. With the microloan, she will be able to buy larger quantities of charcoal at once and get a better price. This will increase her profits. Anna is married and a mother of eight children. Three of the youngest are still in school. She also supports a sibling and two grandchildren. She typically works very long days to support her family: 12-hour days from Monday to Saturday selling charcoal. This loan will enable Anna to improve… Read More
Help Beatrice Expand Her Linens Crafting Business
Beatrice, 43, makes a living making and selling tablecloths and other household linens in her community. Before setting up her business, she stayed at home, taking care of her children, not earning her own income. Beatrice will invest the loan funds into buying materials and fabric needed for her crafts. She is divorced and the sole provider for her three children. The loan will be a much-needed boost for her business and will enable her to take better care of her family. Her goal for… Read More
Empower Esther to Buy Charcoal in Bulk
Esther, 45, is in the business of selling charcoal. She will invest the loan funds into buying five sacks of charcoal to resell in her community. By buying bulk, she can save money and time and increase her profits. Esther is divorced and has four grown-up children who have already finished school. Her youngest is 16. She now takes care of her grandchild. Select your donation option:Deki (our microloan partner)Learn More About Donation Options The loan will help her to save for her long-term business… Read More
Loan Laura Funds to Start Selling Charcoal
Laura, 68, is setting up a charcoal retail business in South Sudan. A widow, her six children are grown and living on their own. She , however, supports three orphans who are under her care. Laura currently sells second-hand clothes but wants to switch to selling charcoal because it is more profitable. She will invest her microloan into 10 sacks of charcoal, which she will then sell in her community. Being able to buy the goods upfront and in bulk will increase her profits and… Read More
Help Mary Buy New Furniture for Her Restaurant
Mary, 38, is among the first of Hope Ofiriha’s entrepreneurs from Magwi, South Sudan. She is a mother of three children (aged 10, 7, and 3) who runs a small restaurant. Mary needs an investment to expand her restaurant and take her business to the next level. With her loan, she will buy chairs, tables, and the various ingredients needed for cooking meals. The loan, combined with hard work, will make a big difference to her restaurant. Mary can start saving the extra income to… Read More
We’ve Reached $50,000 in GlobalGiving Donations
I’ve got great news to share! Today, thanks to our generous donors, we reached $50,000 in GlobalGiving donations, more than $32,000 of it this year. GlobalGiving has given us an invaluable boost at a time when many of our regular donors are cutting back due to the global recession. Thank you Global Giving! Thank you Hope Ofiriha supporters! Thank you donors! As you may recall, last July GlobalGiving’s participated in (or turbo charged) our rally to throw a baby shower for our Onura clinic in South… Read More
Lee Ben Ibo Has Found a Sponsor!
Lee Ben, the child of South Sudanese refugees, lives in Uganda with his grandmother. When his father disappeared in 2008, his mother began working three jobs to support her two children—as a night watchman at an industrial area, boda-boda (bicycle taxi driver), and gardener. She is currently attending a training program away from home to become a tailor. When she is done, she plans to open a tailor shop, so she can better support her children… Read More
Help Educate & Feed a Malnourished Child
Brian Lobene is the fifth in a family of five children. His refugee parents are too poor to pay for nutritious food for their five children, let alone school fees. Brian’s hungry stomach is bloated, the telltale sign of malnutrition in children. His parents move from place to place around Kampala begging for employment, but it is nearly impossible for uneducated refugees to find a good one. Please sponsor him, so he can go to boarding school, have regular nutritious meals, and escape a lifetime of poverty… Read More
Christine Anyero Has Found a Sponsor!
Christine’s parents are South Sudanese refugees who fled to Uganda in 1997 to escape the civil war. The family settled in Nakawa Acholi, a slum in the outskirts of Kampala. Although, Christine, and her six siblings have been living with their parents, it was their aunt who was the family breadwinner until her death in May 2011. As largely uneducated refugees, both of her parents have had a hard time finding descent work. Right now, her elderly and frail father… Read More
Provide Hope to a Hungry & Homeless Child
When Annet’s father died in a LRA attacked in 2002, her mother supported her 10 children selling local breweries and bananas from land a kind Ugandan let them use. This good Samaritan died last year, however, and the family could no longer harvest and sell bananas. On March 30, they were evicted from the home they had been living in since 1997 because they had not paid rent in several months. Annet and her siblings are no longer attending school because… Read More
Polly Amitto Has Found a Sponsor!
After both of her parents died, Polly and her two younger brothers and three younger sisters went to live in the Kakira slum outside of Kampala, Uganda. No family or friends stepped forward to care for the children. The children started a hair salon to generate income for school fees, house rent, and food. They didn’t have enough resources and training, however, to compete with other salons, so their business went under and they ended up homeless and hungry… Read More
Saterina Lakang Has Found a Sponsor!
After Saterina was orphaned, she moved to Kampala, Uganda, to live with her grandmother. When her grandmother died a few years later, she moved in with a Sudanese family headed by a single mother, mama Martha Ayaa. Mama Martha is barely able to support Saterina and her own seven children selling local breweries. Her hand-to-mouth enterprise doesn’t cover her household’s basic needs, and her own seven children do not go to school… Read More
Celebrating Norway’s Constitution: Happy May 17!
Each year on May 17 Norwegians fill the streets with cheers and flags in celebration of Norway’s constitution, adopted in 1814. It sometimes happens that foreigners inadvertently walk out of Oslo’s main railway station and stumble into the capital city’s May 17 parade. Either they then join in, or they run for cover and exit the country muttering about total chauvinistic madness. There may well be an element of madness about Norway’s May 17th celebrations, everything being relative. The event commemorates the Norwegian Constitution, signed… Read More
Mathew Hobbe Has Found a Sponsor!
Mathew needs your love and support to gain access to basic things, such as shoes, a bed with sheets and blankets, and an education. He lives with his mother and grandmother in the slum of Kajansjji, an outskirt of Kampala, Uganda, and will never attend school without finding a sponsor. Mathew’s father has been unable to find work locally and moved out of the area to work, when he can find it, on construction sites. Mathew’s grandmother and mother… Read More
Khasfa Achan Has Found a Sponsor!
Khasfa Achan is a partial orphan whose father died when she was a toddler. When her young mother married a second husband, she sent Khasfa to live with her grandparents. Her grandparents cannot afford to pay the school fees for all of their own children still living at home let alone their grandchild. Her grandfather is barely able to put food on the table working on and off as a carpenter. Khasfa is a very good student, loves science, and has so much potential… Read More
Educate Children and Fight Poverty
Since the signing of the peace agreement in 2005, Omilling village has seen an influx of returning refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), including hundreds of war orphans and former child soldiers. The only school the village has to serve several thousand elementary-aged students is a small two-room temporary shack made out of twigs. The shack, used for early elementary, has no text books and no pit latrines (giving the school grounds an unpleasant odor)… Read More
Stop Childbirth from Being a Death Sentence
The maternal mortality rate in South Sudan is one of the highest in the world. An absence of trained healthcare staff, structures, and paved roads means the small, rustic maternity clinic Hope Ofiriha runs in the Onura settlement is the only medical facility about 3,500 area women can turn to give birth. The clinic isn’t fully equipped to handle deliveries, so many mothers needlessly die giving birth. Our Onura Maternal Survival Project pays for sterile supplies… Read More
Provide a Village with Drinking Water
While water has always been a problem in Onura, the drought (affecting more than 20 million people across east Africa) has created a crisis. Villagers, mostly women and girls, must walk many kilometers every single day to collect every drop. This prevents many girls from going to school and many women from having enough time to earn a decent living. Most of the water they collect—from stagnant ponds, marshes, or ditches—is contaminated with parasites and bacteria… Read More
Provide Lifesaving Healthcare and Medicines
The consequences of insufficient healthcare in South Sudan are dire. The region’s neonatal, infant, child, and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world, and the average life expectancy is only 42 years old. Routine health issues, such as diarrhea, pregnancy, and puncture wounds, can be a death sentence. Omilling, where Hope Ofiriha’s Loheru Health Post is located, faces the added burden of having one of the worst HIV-AIDS concentrations in South Sudan… Read More
Combat Malnutrition with Beekeeping
Many women in the remote village of Onura are single mothers supporting three or more children—their own off-spring, the children of relatives, war orphans, or children separated from their families. Many of these children, like half of children in the area, suffer from malnutrition. Beekeeping is a relatively cheap business for women to run to earn income to feed their families. Bees find their own food (while helping fertilize crops and without over grazing or contributing to deforestation)… Read More
Keep Impoverished Refugees in School
Our Uganda Education Project sends South Sudanese refugee children living in slums on the outskirt of Kampala city to school. Not only does the project pay their school fees and buy them school uniforms and books, it ensures the children are fed, clothed, and have access to medical care. The project is similar to our direct child sponsorship program, except it pools donations, allowing donors to give once or now and then without making a commitment. In 2010… Read More
Stop Cookstoves from Polluting and Killing
Virtually everyone in the remote village of Onura uses wood to cook over traditional cookstoves. This means villagers, largely women and girls, have to spend hours foraging for fuel and hours inhaling the toxic smoke from the fires (often with infant babies strapped to their backs). The toxins in smoke cause serious respiratory illnesses, such as pneumonia, emphysema, lung cancer, and bronchitis. At the same time, cutting down trees for fuel woods is contributing… Read More
Invest in Microloans for Women Refugees
Many South Sudanese women living as squatters in slums in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda, are single mothers supporting three or more children—their own off-spring, the children of relatives, war orphans, or children separated from their families. Because jobs for unskilled and uneducated refugees are scarce, their best hope for supporting their families is creating and operating their own tiny enterprise. Without assets and referrals, however, these women cannot… Read More
Provide Better Blocks for Reconstruction
War-ravaged Magwi County is in dire need of permanent homes for the 100,000 refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) flooding the area. Building materials are in short supply, however, and people are cutting down trees at an alarming rate. Severe deforestation (Sudan has one of the worst deforestation problems in the world) results in soil erosion, declining agricultural productivity, and contributes to climate change worldwide. Blocks are a better choice, but… Read More
Bring Hope to a Destitude Family
Hope Ofiriha hopes to expand our reach and help women and children from South Sudan rebuild their lives in Omdurman. As a pilot project, we are helping a family of six: Ms. Alia, a divorced mother; her four children; and her elderly mother. The family was left destitute after Ms. Alia’s husband divorced her and refused to pay child support. As a divorced woman, she is shunned by her community, and Sudan has no social services to help her and her children… Read More
Build a Classroom for Vulnerable Children
Since the signing of the peace agreement in 2005, the remote Onura settlement has seen an influx of returning refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), including more than a hundred war orphans and former child soldiers. Thanks to Hope Ofiriha’s generous donors, the two-classroom Onura Primary School opened in the settlement in 2006 to serve 72 students. Since then, the school has grown to more than 350 students (150 girls and 200 boys), forcing some classes… Read More
