Solihull Rotarians are appealing for the public to help raise £9,000 to train nurses at a Ugandan medical and crisis centre for children.
The latest appeal, to fund diploma level training for nine nurses, has been launched following a recent visit to Potter’s Village by the Rotary’s president Phil Godfrey and paediatric nurse educator at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Vicci Hornsby.
With the support of St Helen’s Church in Solihull, Phil’s club has already donated vital equipment worth more than £7,500, including 18 cots, intravenous pumps and a CPAP breathing machine.
He said: “The main purpose of our visit in April was to go and see the 18 babies’ cots we had funded as a Rotary Club. The babies had been sleeping in old polystyrene fish boxes, plastic baths and all sorts of things that couldn’t be kept clean. In fact several babies had died from sepsis due to the way they were being nursed.
“The new cots are on wheels and a sensible height for the nurse or mother and made from the sort of plastics that can be properly sanitised.
“We wanted to see the cots we’d paid for in action and to understand more about Potter’s Village and find any other ways we can help going forwards.”
Most children end up at Potter’s Village because their mothers died in childbirth or were unable to care for them due to psychiatric illness. Some children have simply been abandoned.
Friends of Potter’s Village provide financial support for these children, and this continues once they are settled back into the community, usually with their family.
Solihull Rotary Club has pledged to continue its support for the project alongside a charity established in its name in 2007. Friends of Potter’s Village is a UK-based charity supporting the work of Potter’s Village Ministries, raising funds and awareness of the work being carried out among children and their families in Kisoro, Southern Uganda.
The latest fundraising project aims to put all nine of the centre’s nurses through an 18-month diploma training program at £900 each.
Phil said: “What we need now is for as many people as possible to help us enable Potters Village to survive and help the children there who badly need it. We want to be able to give them certainty of a future.”
Phil joins Vicci in giving regular talks about Potter’s Village to help raise as much awareness as possible.
Vicci said: “The trip to Uganda, was an opportunity to see nursing care in a different light, after 26 years in the NHS, I was in awe of what these amazing nurses were able to do with such little equipment and resources. Potters Village will not survive without the upskill in education of the nurses. The funding from us, will be a lifeline for them to continue to care for these neonates in conditions that the UK could not imagine.”
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Find out more about the work of The Friends of Potter’s Village here
