Many families living in the slum communities have very complicated situations and some need extra help outside of the Community Groups to get back on their feet. The Revelation Life Family Centre encapsulates all the themes of our work in supporting families with the tools they need to improve their situations and stay together. We give struggling families a temporary place to stay in simple houses where they can re-build their lives and learn new skills in agriculture, business, parenting, health and nutrition. At the same time, they have the space to see improvements in their emotional well-being through counselling and prayer.
Families stay at the centre for a programme that last five months – time enough for them to start building hope for their futures. We have seen that as situations are touched by God’s love, support and training, families are restored to one another and themselves – enabling them to move on to the next stage in their lives with confidence. They will often then take their new skills and settle in their ‘home village’ with new hope and dignity.
What we’ve achieved
With secured funding we have had great success in setting up an innovative and much needed service for highly vulnerable families from the slum communities of Kampala. Below are some of the projects this funding has enabled.
Five Family-Sized Houses
2014 saw the building of five family sized houses, built using conventional techniques, with the addition of recycled glass bottles throughout the walls and passive solar design. Each house has a kitchen area and water tank. The five houses costed £22,500 in total.
Community Hall
The Community Hall was constructed in 2014 from local materials, such as stone, clay, mud and recycled bottles. As with all of our projects, it was made with local labour, at £4,600, and is in constant use by families and our Community Group.
Centre Office
The Centre Office, made from a 20ft shipping container, with a green roof planned for it, was completed in 2015. This space enables us to conduct meetings, store files and materials and run a small, professional office on site.
The Future
We now want to build on the success of the programme so far and impact even more families, whilst increasing the sustainability of The Family Centre for years to come.
Four more Family Homes
We want the Mugezi Building Team to construct a further four family homes at the Family Centre, to increase the impact of the investment in staff and structures of the site with only a small increase in running costs (£250 per month increase in running costs). The construction of the new homes would also be an excellent training opportunity for current centre families and both local groups and the Mugezi team. After training, we envisage these techniques being used in local villages and adopted by local builders. The designs make use of both earth-bag construction techniques, using old rice sacks, and improved mud brick construction. Both of these techniques make use of local soil, lime and clay to construct very low-cost, sustainable and beautiful homes.
What we need
For £16,500 we can expand the number of households, adding four new houses built using innovative, low-cost techniques. Each house will have a small kitchen, water tank and adaptable living area for families to live in, and be inspired by, during their stay.
As with all of our projects, we re-invest 20% of each building grant back into training more people in improved building techniques through the Mugezi training courses. This adds to the sustainability of our work and means that each grant funder is investing in the future of alternative building businesses across Uganda.
