Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 10th, and to celebrate, Help One Now has been honoring some of the women with whom we have the privilege of partnering who care so deeply for the children that are in their community. Now, we want to highlight a different story about a boy who lost his mother and the amazing woman who cares for him now. This story comes from Genessa Newberry, our Africa Anti-Trafficking Coordinator.
“In the future, when I succeed in my studies, I wish to build her a nice house, buy her a car, and care for her until death.”
These are the words of Kintu Sula, a 15-year-old boy in the Help One Now sponsorship program when asked how he feels about his foster mother Flavia. Kintu’s biological mother left Kintu with his father when he was just a small child. Feeling ill equipped to care for Kintu and his two sisters, his father eventually sent the three children to live with their grandmother in the rural village of Kikubo, Uganda. He later joined them to live in Kikubo, only to leave again when he gained employment with the village witch doctor and became an alcoholic. Left to care for more children than she was able to provide for, Kintu’s grandmother eventually took the 2 girls and moved to a distant village to live with extended family, leaving Kintu to live alone in their small home. He was only 13 at the time.
Determined to go to school and gain an education, he began making charcoal to sell and asking for jobs with the local bricklayers. But he could rarely make enough to feed himself, let alone go to school. Kintu was one of several boys in the village that would regularly come to His Mercy School (a project started by Help One Now’s local leader Pastor Edward) offering to work in exchange for schooling. Flavia, as the school secretary, would see him often. Seeing that he was a very smart and determined boy, Flavia hired him to work in her garden at home in exchange for school fees. When she learned that he was just a child living alone, she later took him in to her home to live and enrolled him in to Help One Now’s sponsorship program. “He is such a smart and very wise boy,” she says as she glances over at him with a smile on her face.
Kintu now has a mother who loves him very much and, as no child should, he no longer worries about how he will feed himself or go to school. But the most beautiful thing about Kintu’s story is that he doesn’t think of Help One Now as the one who saved him. In fact, he doesn’t even really know who Help One Now is. He just knows the compassionate heart of his foster mother and the generosity of Pastor Edward. This is the true heartbeat of Help One Now!
In honor of Mother’s Day, will you consider joining our child sponsorship program and helping a child like Kintu? Your generosity will help Pastor Edward continue to help feed, clothe, and educate the children of Jinja, Uganda. To put it another way–your gifts could literally save a child’s life. For more information about sponsoring a child through Help One Now, click here.