Solar Panels Brighten the Night for Orphans and Vulnerable Children
The Manna Rescue Home in Fort Portal is for orphans that have no where else to go. All thirty boys and girls living at the Home are HIV positive and they have no parents, no family, no way to pay school fees, and they get no parental love and affection. At least that was true before they entered the rescue home, started four years ago by American Carol Adams.
Thanks to Carol, all 30 children now have real hope they will live long enough to see their own future. They all attend school, eat three healthy meals a day and take anti-retroviral therapy to keep the HIV virus suppressed. When the children are sick, Carol takes them to a local treatment center herself. “Without medical care, all of these kids would die hungry and alone. When children have HIV, they die quickly,” she says.
Like many small charities, Manna Rescue House does not run on hope alone and Carol is always searching for vital funding. To keep expenses low, she recently took in two U.S. Peace Corps volunteers, a U.S. Catholic Medical Mission Board volunteer and others. And this month, the Manna Rescue House will buy solar panels, funded by the American Embassy’s PEPFAR-funded Community Grants Program. Carol says the award is arriving just in time.
“Every day I turn children away. Churches, clinics and communities bring more and more children that need our help, but we can’t care for them all. It is heartbreaking,” Carol says.
Without the PEPFAR grant that arrived this month, Carol says she would be forced to cancel the school lunch program for all 378 orphans next year.
Manna Rescue Home is part of Carol’s parent charity, Youth Encouragement Services. YES supports orphans in two ways; first is scholastic support for 378 orphans in the Fort Portal community, and second is Manna Rescue Home.
The first part of the PEPFAR grant will buy solar panels for the rescue home. With new solar panels, Carol and the staff can rely on steady, free light at night as they tend to sick HIV-positive children. Without the burden of high electricity bills, Carol can redirect scarce donor funding back towards the children.
The balance of the PEPFAR grant will pay for school fees, school lunches and school uniforms for 378 orphans living in the community. Without YES, there is little hope these orphans would ever see the inside of a classroom. Education is their best hope to grow out of poverty.
With support from PEPFAR, Manna Rescue Home and YES will continue to give hope to children that dream of a future. Already, YES have program graduates in the professional world. Recently, a YES graduate finished medical school overseas and returned to Fort Portal to serve as a doctor in the community.