Boise to Bukavu

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Good news!  Arnold and Judith have each found a school to attend so that makes 6 for 6 Nshombo family children enrolled in the winter school term in Kampala by Boise To Bukavu, Inc donors!  Your help is needed to keep them there!  See the “Donate Now” page for details!   Having the children in school not only furthers their education, which is vital to their future,of course, but it will also give the Nshombo parents time to work on creating a business to help support their family.  The kids will get school uniforms and a hot lunch each day as part of their tuition costs.  This means less cost to feed them at home and less clothing costs for the family as well.  Thanks to those of you helping to send these kids to school.  We will post information about the schools shortly so you understand where your dollars are going and how this impacts these children.  They are so grateful for this opportunity.  Arnold will be taking pictures of the kids in their uniforms and at their schools soon for us to post!  The new school term officially starts in early February in Kampala.  Please stay tuned for regular updates (at least weekly and sometime more) on life in Kampala for the Nshombos.  They recently started the process of applying for refugee status with the United Nations in hopes of eventually getting to the United States – or a safer continent which offers them a future.  

Soon we will be creating a section of this blog to talk about the refugee assimilation needs we plan to address within Boise.  It has been very gratifying to assist the Nshombo family with their needs in Kampala and we will continue to do this until they have had time to become self sufficient.  They are certainly very driven towards this end.   More soon…

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Good news from the Nshombos.  They have used our first set of donations to enroll 4 of their 6 children in Kampala in school for the new semester starting in February ’09.   They held off on enrollinmg Arnold (17) and Judith (19), worried about the cost.   We have asked them to find out what it will cost to get Arnold and Judith enrolled in a school as we think this is a primary importance.  These kids have lost years of their life to war and family separation, and we believe now is their chance to create a future for themselves.   Schools are very inexpensive in Kampala and I hope Boise To Bukavu, Inc can soon support all 6 of the Nshombo kids in school as well as English lessons for Mama and Papa Nshombo.  

I talked to Arnold just this morning by email and he has agreed to write a piece every week or two for this blog to keep everyone updated on the family’s life in Kampala.   So, that will be coming soon.  First, he has to heal from malaria and concentrate on finding postential schools.  The family sent Fidel some wonderful pictures from his early childhood which we will post on this site soon.  Also, Arnold promises to use a new camera we sent him for Christmas to send pictures of the whole family soon!  It is wonderful for Fidel to get images from his youth and it will be particularly special when he can see some current pictures of his family in Kampala.  He has not seen any of them in more than a dozen years!  Fidel writes a blog that we will either post here or link to shortly too,  Happy new year to all.   Let’s make 2009 a year of opportunity for the Nshombo family!

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