Our projects for the war affected children and families, as well as the impoverished people of Uganda are long term by design, with numerous milestones along the way.
They include provisions for the child soldiers, the young girls that have been used as soldiers and sex slaves, and the nearly one and a half million people who have been living for the past two decades in seemingly hopeless conditions in the harsh environments of the IDP camps.
Mission Goals
One City’s primary focus for the next 12 months in
The first is to establish medical clinics that will double as medical training centers. At these centers we will employ the same highly successful Train the Trainer techniques utilized by C.E.R.F. (Christian Emergency Response Force), FEMA and Homeland Security in the United States to educate and prepare our civilian population for post disaster survival and medical response. Through this “grass root” Train the Trainer program aimed at empowering Ugandan citizens to train other citizens, we can create a self perpetuating movement to seek out and provide emergency aid to the children and orphans in most need of medical attention.
The second is to provide advocacy awareness of what life is like for the more than 2.1 million at risk orphans in Uganda facing daily survival challenges just to stay alive.
The third is to provide a safe, profoundly empowering and life changing experience to teens needing to escape the deadly cycle of drugs and alcohol. These vices are only aggravated by peer pressures and a destructive self image that can only be addressed through a dramatic change in environment and through a challenge to ones life perspective.The foundational principal for SOS is based on the eternal perspective, 'nothing has value but that which you turn over to God - including our lives.'
One City will avail a safe and life changing experience for young adults struggling with today's tough issues. By taking them away from the familiar and destructive influences in their daily lives, they will be exposed, instead, to a world where life cannot be taken for granted. With the amazing opportunity to work alongside the people of Uganda, whether it's building, teaching, farming or some other life sustaining project, their perception on the realities of life will take on a whole different perspective.
While there is a great deal of groundwork to cover in Uganda and in the states before we'll be ready to launch SOS, God is opening the doors for this ministry, and we are relying totally on His timing and direction.
This ministry was birthed through the death of our son, Sean, on July 30, 2007. Sean's friends played a very important role in his life. No matter what he was personally going through, helping his friends always took priority. Bringing this ministry full circle to include our sons from here will entrust that we can "Keep the Light On"; keep the light on the memory of all our sons whose battle is over, and on the faces of all those who are still in there fighting, who still have hope.
We will be leaving for Uganda at the end of September, operating out of Kampala (the capitol of Uganda)
for
the first couple of months and then heading north into the Mbale
area, and northwest to Gulu. Part of this time will be training teams
to move into the battered southern Sudan area, which has been hit very
hard the last several months. We will be updating this site and the Jambo Blog so everyone can stay well informed.
