WELCOME HOME AFRICA

Welcome Home Africa is an orphanage in Jinja, Uganda for children ages birth to 5 years old. (www.welcomehomeafrica.com)

Yes it is an orphanage, but it is not one whose primary goal is to have kids adopted. Yes, it is a piece of what they do, but it is far from the whole of it.

On a basic level, they love, feed, and provide often life altering medical care to 65 children.

However, they also are fully run and staffed day-to day-by local Ugandan's- something very few organizations in all of Africa do. They are changing the staff and the families they work with. They give micro-loans to families who can't afford to feed their children and need a leg up, with the hope of giving children back to local, healthy, self-sustaining Ugandan families.

They rebuild the hospital beds in their cities rundown children's hospital and provide funding for village outreach and medical treatments. They send motorcycle teams and boat teams into remote villages to help, pray, and find the greatest medical needs. They reach out to the communities that send them kids to hopefully sow preventative and redemptive seeds in those communities to stop the extreme poverty problems at their source.

The president of this organization, a humble and simple Australian American pastors wife/nurse named Mandy Sydo, raises all the money through her own friends and contacts in the US and around the world, often carrying great loads herself. Despite the fact that she spends only about 3 months a year in Uganda, she is known in the entire Jinja community as "momma mandy" and is on a first name basis with the government leadership of Uganda as well. Recently, Uganda had a national summit on adoption and Mandy was the only non-native Ugandan and non-government individual invited to that summit. Her passion, leadership, and relentless devotion to helping Uganda succeed in the world has made a difference in countless lives.

I think this small ngo is well worth the time, energy, and support of an organization like One Day's Wages.

Oh... and yes, I have a vested interest in this too. I have personally adopted 2- 5 year old twins from this orphanage and visited it twice. I can say on a personal experience level, that these people are humble, gentle, sincere, honest, men and women who could so use the help of ODW.