January 2025

No Longer Alone.

Trying to make all your ends meet can be stressful. Parenting can be overwhelming. Doing it alone makes it all worse. Now imagine trying to do that as a teen girl in Uganda. This was reality for Sarah.

Sarah’s mom abandoned her when she was nine months old. Her dad has another wife and family, and she’s never gotten along with her stepmom.

In other words, Sarah has been alone and without support for most of her life. Unfortunately, this led to her getting pregnant at a young age.

Sarah spent her pregnancy at Wakisa Ministries, our partner organization that takes in and cares for pregnant teenage girls in Uganda. Wakisa does everything they can to set these girls up for success, including enrolling them in community vocational courses so the girls can learn a skill that will generate an income after their baby is born.

Wakisa helped Sarah attend a vocational course where she learned to cook, and now since her baby has been born, she’s gotten a job at a restaurant!

Sarah is able to make money, care for her baby, and dream for her future. She wants to go back to school to take advanced courses in cooking and eventually open her own restaurant, all to provide her son a better path than her own.

This is huge! Sarah went from being mostly without a support system and pregnant, to now having a community at Wakisa and a skill that can earn her an income for her and her baby. Thank you for your support of this project and impacting lives like Sarah’s!

Dreams Continued.

Imagine loving college, performing well, and wanting nothing more than to continue learning. You pore over your books, stay after to ask professors questions, and would rather have a quiet night reading than going out with friends.

This is Pooja’s story.

Now imagine that the university you attend is unable to provide second-year students like yourself a scholarship to continue your education. You go to ask your parents for help, but your mom works part-time and can’t afford to help. Your dad, though an electrician, struggles with alcoholism and is pretty absent from the family. He spends all his money on alcohol and can’t help you either. Your worst fear comes true: you have to drop out.

This is also Pooja’s story.

However, thanks to our partners in India, her story doesn’t end there.

One of our partners got to know Pooja and her situation. He advocated for her to receive a scholarship through The Hope Venture’s fund for India college students, and Pooja was able to receive the funds and got to go back to school!

Now her wildest dreams can come true: to finish school and work in the government to help improve the lives of her people.

Thanks to everyday people like you and me who choose to give, people like Pooja can continue their education and help make their communities, and even the world, a better place. It matters, thank you!