When I was a kid, I used to love playing with water in the sink. There were so many questions to answer – what happens to a Kleenex when it gets wet? Does hot water taste the same as cold water? Can my doll swim? As I played, my mother certainly had to worry about the sink overflowing, but she never had to worry about whether I would get typhoid or cholera from the water.

CARITAS For Children also has sponsorship programs to support the education of Catholic sisters and seminarians studying for the priesthood. A dynamic young man named Frank Lwanga Kyazze has had his seminary education supported by CARITAS For Children for several years. He has truly become part of the CARITAS family. He goes out of his way to look out for the children in our child sponsorship programs and serves as their mentor. We asked him to introduce himself to our global CARITAS family and write about his calling to the priesthood. — Ed.

My name is Kyazze Frank Lwanga. I hail from Nkokonjeru Parish. I am the son of the late Mr. Emmanuel Lwanga and the late Mrs. Margret Tusaba Lwanga. I have eight siblings, three girls and five boys. Currently, I am undertaking my theological studies at St. Mary’s National Major Seminary Ggaba, and am in my third year. I am a seminarian belonging to Lugazi diocese.

by Jennifer Ostrowski, CARITAS For Children Intern

Some of the “original” CARITAS children, the very first to be sponsored who have been with the child sponsorship program for many years have now graduated from secondary school (high school) in Uganda. The sisters call these girls “the pioneers”. I had the opportunity to sit with some of these young women and discuss their plans for the future. Today’s post features my conversation with Joan, sponsored by Charbel D. Joan’s answers to my questions appear below in an interview format.

On my last day in Nkokonjeru, my fiancé Kollin and I went for a final visit to St. Anthony Nursery School to say goodbye to the children. Kollin is the Theology Content Writer for CARITAS For Children and this was his first trip to some of the locations of the child sponsorship programs. I accompanied him and volunteered at St. Anthony. Saying goodbye was very difficult as we had grown to love the little children at St. Anthony. Kollin and I were very blessed that both Benedict, the boy he sponsors, and Verone, the sponsor child of my parents, attend Baby Class at St. Anthony so we got to know both little boys very well, which made saying goodbye doubly difficult.

Ester Masane and Deborah Zuluka are sisters 

For many people from outside of Uganda, however, the sisters’ presumably different surnames make their relationship confusing...

This is because they do not have surnames in the manner which people outside of Africa do – instead, they have clan names.

Like most Ugandans, rather than receiving given names and surnames at birth, Ester and Deborah received religious names and clan names.

As a philosophy and language student ultimately hoping to start a career in art therapy, I have been thinking about how to bring art into the lives of the children at the Centre of the Holy Mother of Mercy just outside Warsaw where I’m serving my internship in Poland with CARITAS For Children.

Naturally I feel a deep desire to introduce, incorporate, and encourage different art activities, but the main question was, “How?”

Four-year-old Benedict lives in a two room house made of reddish-brown mud plastered over a wooden frame, woven from sticks. In places, the mud has crumbled away from the frame, letting small pools of light inside, where they dot the dirt floor. Angela, Benedict’s grandmother, wants to patch the holes, but, at about eighty years old, she cannot manage the task on her own.

Last week, Solomon began attending St. Anthony Nursery School, where many of the youngest students in CARITAS child sponsorship programs attend preschool. Although Solomon is eleven years old, last Thursday was his first day of formal schooling. His story is one of both tremendous hardship and incredible potential.

by Catherine G. Dulan, CARITAS For Children Volunteer

A teacher walks into a room full of eager children.

She smiles as she says, “Hello children.”

“Hello teacher,” they respond in unison.

“How are you?”

The choir of children responds: “We are humble, obedient, and ready to listen.”

The Kibera slum outside Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is a sprawling mass of huts made from rusted bits of corrugated tin and rotting wood. In most homes there is no running water or sanitary facilities, and no electricity. The streets are filled with garbage and populated by street children and beggars. It is the second largest slum in all of Africa, estimated to be home to almost 1 million people. As more people move from rural areas to cities in a desperate scramble for work, slum communities such as Kibera are only growing more crowded, encompassing members from all the major ethnic groups in Kenya.