mummyfoundation@yahoo.com
Mission and Vision
To support girls, teenage mothers and women to provide them a space where they can realize their potential through promoting self-esteem, self-awareness, motivation and sense of purpose towards positive community involvement and national development at large.
At Mummy Foundation, we strive to increase and improve our services each and every day. Our services currently include the learning center, a kitchen so that we can provide a nutritious lunch for our participants, music, life skills and computer lessons and a small playground for the little ones while their mothers and grandmothers learn. We wish to continue growing and support as many women and girls as possible, which serves to strengthen both individuals and the community as a whole.
In the slums of Katwe, life is extremely challenging, especially for young women and girls. Food, jobs and proper sanitation are scarce, whilst violence and sexual abuses against women are rampant. At Mummy Foundation, we believe that by investing in young women, providing education, life skills, education and music opportunities, we can break the cycle of poverty and exploitation. We believe that the first step in alleviating the issues surrounding these life-threatening conditions is to empower women to lift themselves and their communities out of destitution and build better lives for future generations.
In 2005, Lucy Khan, raised in relative prosperity by her grandparents, met her future husband, Segawa Bosco. Bosco had grown up in Katwe, orphaned at the age of twelve, and forced into the streets with his three sisters, charged with feeding them and finding shelter at night. In the course of this desperate life, Bosco met many other street children, and even at this young age, organized them to work together to lift themselves out of these dismal conditions. Through Bosco, Lucy was introduced to a world she had not before known, and she realized immediately that she had to be a part of the solution to these grave issues.
Together with Ssabaganzi Kevin, they decided to form a project to help the young women and girls of Katwe. After four years of study in India, Kevin brought his degree in information technology back to his home in Katwe. He found that the conditions for girls has significantly worsened in his absence; he noticed girls as young as ten years working in bars, being forced to sleep with customers. He teamed with Lucy Kahn, and with the help of her husband, Bosco, opened Mummy Foundation. With scarce resources, in 2010, Kevin and Lucy opened a small room, which they envisioned as a safe haven and learning space for these young girls.
They relied on the kindness of volunteers to teach the girls basic reading and writing skills, and also promoted music and singing as a way to relieve stress and trauma for these girls. Mummy has since grown from one tiny room to a fully-functional learning facility; there is an IT room where community members can come to learn computing skills, a well-supplied library, three classrooms, two offices and a kitchen so that they may prepare lunch for the girls. There is also a sick bay where children can receive basic care when sick or injured.
They used a multi-generational approach, which welcomed two or more generations from each family; an impoverished mother of a pregnant teenage girl could come and learn skills, or how to save money to provide school fees and general sensitization of the unique issues that the teenage mothers were facing. They worked together to address sexual abuse, gender-based violence, inequality and lack of education to resolve these issues on multiple levels by the women and girls themselves.