Masese Outreach
Amazima has fallen in love with the slum community of Masese. We serve the people in Masese through feeding, vocational programs, Bible studies, low cost/free healthcare, HIV management and testing, malnutrition rehabilitation, and community service.
Amazima feeds over 1,600 orphaned and vulnerable children of the Masese community a lunch meal Monday through Friday. Many of these children are from the Karimojong tribe. Seeing that the children were dying of malnutrition and starvation and not in school because they were fetching water, looking for food or begging in the streets, Amazima began a feeding program on a school property. The children come to school in the morning where they know they will be fed, and take a plate of food home each week to their caregivers. They are also allowed to attend class free of charge at the school, participate in Bible studies, and receive medical care and general health training.
Another outreach in Masese is vocational. Amazima initiated a self-sustaining program for a group of Karimojong woman in the making of magazine bead necklaces. Read more about it.
Additionally, Amazima partners with Equip International in their project, "Nets not Caskets," to put mosquito nets over every bed in Masese and educate the people about preventing deadly malaria.
Once a week, Amazima provides the community of Masese with a free (or very low cost) clinic complete with HIV testing and HIV counseling done by our social worker, Christine. Christine keeps a record of the people that are HIV positive in the community, takes them for regular check-ups and teaches them how to best care for themselves and their children. We have seen huge improvement in the lives of these people after receiving anti-retroviral treatment, offered free here in Jinja.
Amazima also offers outpatient malnutrition rehabilitation for severely malnourished children. In rare cases, the child and their mother live in our Executive Director's home temporarily while the child recovers. Our goal is to teach parents how to help their children recover and provide them with the resources they need to do so in their homes. We provide severely malnourished children with powdered milk, a porridge made of millet, mukene and nuts (all very high in protein), and PlumpyNut, a free nutrition supplement provided by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Our social worker and Executive Director teach the parents how to prepare these things for their children and monitor the children closely to see their improvement.
Most of all we long to show these people the love of Christ while enabling and empowering them to keep their families healthy and safe. Amazima teaches the Bible to small groups of Karimojong people and individuals in the homes of our staff or in the home of our Executive Director, Katie Davis. We long to meet their immediate physical needs but always accompany our work with the message of Jesus as their Savior.
