ERRC Update - May the Work Continue!!

Meet Grace and her four beauties
by Betty

Grace Ampumuza is a mother of three and a guardian of four children. She is 29 yrs old and a survivor of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Her husband died from cholera in Nakivale refugee camp in western Uganda where they lived for five years after the genocide. She talks about her perils with tears welling up in her eyes.

Grace with the four kids she looks after, three of her own and her big sister’s son Geoffrey (12 yrs). Geoffrey’s mother Beatrice got a mental problem after the genocide, so Grace had to take up her son. Grace has no formal school qualifications, so she has no specified job. She does domestic work and runs other errands for people and gets money to survive and pay school dues for her children. She first came to the center four months ago because she thought that Niteo could help her sponsor her kids in school. I told her that we’re not doing that right now. However she was pleased about all the books we have and from then on, she started bringing her kids to the center to read.

We gave her a casual job for cleaning the center after we sent away Vincent who was the care taker. Grace is working so well in keeping the center neat. She works three days in a week and we pay her 60.000 shilling a month. Of course this is not enough for her considering all her responsibilities of her family, but that’s what we could get for her, and we thought it was better than nothing. This center is here for the kids and any thing that I can do to help one kid means so much to ERRC, and Niteo as a whole. After talking to Grace and knowing her story, I on behalf of ERRC gave her some stationery for her kids to use in school as our contribution to her kids’ education. These included pens, pencils, crayons, reams of paper, erasers and exercise books. Grace received them as a miracle with so much appreciation and she showed me her gratitude in one sentence: God gives us the things we need just on time