Wise Choices For Life.

We are back from our training in Kampala, and we have gained so much from this training.
We spent one week at the African village resort in Mukono, where we did some intensive training on a program called Wise Choices for Life.

Basically the program wants to address the causes of the many maternal and infant deaths in Uganda, as well as the amount of orphanages and orphans in the country.
The program wants to give local people knowledge and life skills so that they can prevent themselves from falling into the poverty trap, and take care of their own family ... instead of being an aid organisation that comes in to help treat the symptoms of poverty.
You can watch a video here to get a bit of a taste of the program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNiCJwm1kqQ

The program is very dense with a lot in it. It covers topics and issues like relationships, marriage, parenting, unfaithfulness, abuse, life skills, reproductive health, family planning, antenatal and postnatal care, abortion, STD's, causes of maternal and infant deaths, increasing population, environmental issues and so on.
The program is delivered from a Christian world view, and discusses what our loving Father God wants for His children in the areas of relationships and health.
So many of the issues we deal with here in our communities is touched upon in this program.

Although a lot of the medical information was not entirely new to me, I think the the main things I got away from this program was it's intended focus, and the way it gets the information across.

I have already said that the program aims to give local people knowledge and skills to prevent them from needed help from aid organisations or NGO's. I find this a great approach. So much of the work we do at YSU feels like patch up work .. or healing / restoration work.
This is vitally important, but sometimes we think 'How can we reach people so we don't have to help someone who has gone through hell and back and needs healing, and instead help them in preventing these traumatic things from happening to them in the first place"
We feel like Wise Choices for Life is that gap that we were missing, the thing we have been wondering about.

The way the program is set out and given to the local people is the other thing I got from it.
There are many different lessons in the three module's, but throughout all the lessons the information, problems and solutions are learnt through a combination of discussion, debate, drama, music and more.
The program is very interactive and helps local people feel like they have contributed to coming up with the solutions to a lot of their issues.

We are very excited to start using this as a tool for YSU, and we will begin this with our tailoring class starting next month.

We thank the WCFL team and Marg for running this conference! We also thank Emily who helped sponsor Aggie and I so we could attend the conference.
Oh and we should thank Douglas, who left his home at 6.30 am every morning to come and spend the day babysitting Ethan at the hotel, so Aggie and I could go through the conference undisturbed.

Thanks everyone.