Seniors and their grandchildren in Uganda and Ethiopia face hopelessness every day. It’s estimated that 56% of Uganda’s elderly suffer from physical disabilities, and 39% have visual impairments without access to a medical center. Will you consider being a special senior friend to make a difference? Senior Friendship is only $38 a month. Read below the benefits our seniors receive.
How Does Sponsorship Work?
For only $38 a month, ROTOM Uganda and/or ROTOM Ethiopia will offer free medical treatment, monthly food support once per week, regular at-home visits, and provide teaching skills to improve their daily living. Your donation also goes to providing safe, nutritious food to vulnerable seniors in Uganda and Ethiopia grappling with food insecurity.
Click here! Sponsor a Senior Friend
FEATURED SENIOR: Tsedalu is married and their family lives in a two-room government rental house made of mud and wattle. She has a bed with an old mattress, sheets and old blanket. She uses a hole for a toilet. The kitchen collapsed forcing her to cook meals outside.
Family situation: She is married and has 3 children, 2 boys and a girl. One son lives in northern Ethiopia and the other children live in the same compound. They are day laborers and cannot help as they too struggle to make a living.
Grandchildren: Tsedalu lives with her husband and 8-year-old grandson, Herab Alemayehu. He is in grade 2 in public school.
Health status: She has back pain and ear pain. She does not get any medical treatment as she does not have the funds to pay for it.
Occupation: Tsedalu used to work as a maidservant for different people but due to her weakening health, no one wishes to hire her. She collects firewood and animal dung to sell to make a living. Her husband is a day laborer and they struggle to make ends meet daily.
Peace is a widow who lives with her granddaughter in a 3-room mud and wattle house that her son Amos built. Their home has no kitchen shelter so she cooks outdoors when it isn’t raining. She has a bedframe with old sheets and a fair blanket. Her granddaughter has a very old bed that is not safe and very old bedding. Widowed years ago, together she and her husband had 8 children. Sadly only 6 are remaining and live in their own homes with large families of their own on very limited income.
Peace experiences health issues such as general body pain and chest pains that has affected her livelihood. To get to the nearest government health center, she walks nearly 8 miles from her house only to receive pain killers and no actual treatment. Thankfully she is a subsistence farmer with two small pieces of land to grow crops to feed her family but mainly survives through working in other people’s gardens.
Joseline lives with her granddaughter, Edith in her own 4-room mud and wattle. Their home is in bad condition. It has cracked walls, the roof is old and the doors and windows are fair. There is no pit latrine however there is a good kitchen shelter for meal preparation. Her bedframe, sheets and blanket are fair but her mattress in in poor condition. Her granddaughter sleeps on a mattress on the floor with a blanket.
A widow, she and her late husband had10 children altogether which live nearby and try to support her by helping in the garden and with household chores. Joseline’s granddaughter Edith is in school and is in Senior 2. Her father helps and provides support with necessary school fees. Edith helps with household chores like collecting water and firewood, preparing meals, and doing laundry. Joseline has high blood pressure and peptic ulcer disease. She has not been getting proper medical support due to lack of funds. She depends on pain relief from using painkillers which she receives from the local government health center. Unable to work, her son and granddaughter with gardening.
Pauline lives with her husband, Narisensio and their 40-year-old daughter Gaudah and 6-year-old grandson, Joshua. Their house is a 4-room mud and wattle home that has a new roof with its walls, windows and doors are in fair condition. The pit latrine in their home is in good condition but their kitchen shelter has an old roof and no door.
The couple has 7 children total: 2 boys and 5 girls. One son and one daughter are deceased. The other son is in his early 40’s but has never married. The daughters are married and live far away except for Gaudah who came home after difficulties with her husband. Gaudah is the only one to help by doing casual labor to bring in a small income.
His mother, Gaudah, provides for their grandson’s school fees by working in other peoples’ gardens. Pauline suffers from peptic ulcers and hypertension and gets her daily medication from the ROTOM center in Muhanga. She relies on Gaudah to provide basic needs but it is never enough.
Would you decide to bless one of these beautiful elder persons who live in abject poverty with your monthly support?
“I came that they may have life and have it to the full.” John 10:10 (NIV)