Kasana Children’s Centre
Kasana Children’s Centre (since 1988)
New Hope Uganda’s Kasana Children’s Centre is the full-time home of nearly 140 children. Essuubi Eppya Vocational Primary School gives free education, vocational training, discipleship and love, food and medical care to 353 children. New Hope Academy now has 137 secondary students, and the New Hope Vocational Institute provides valuable job skills to 38 young adults. Over 100 staff members provide care for these children.
In addition, the New Hope Institute of Childcare and Family (NHICF), located on the Kasana Children’s Centre campus, trains and sends over 40 committed servants of the Lord each year into the “harvest field” to work with orphaned and destitute children across the world. The number of people who have worked with New Hope as short-term missionaries and visitors reaches well into the thousands, each individual contributing their own part to the “New Hope Story.”
An aerial view would show the perfect shape of the original plans for the Kasana Children’s Centre. A circular road encompasses the primary school and the church. Off of this road, seven “spokes” (roads) lead to seven circular family villages each with five round buildings that are the homes for the children and a living and dining area, and one rectangular building for the family parents.
Along these “spokes” is staff housing. Throughout the site, there is also the clinic, the barn, the administration block, the guest house, and eight buildings
that make up NHICF. Across the main road, on a separate site, is the secondary school, more staff housing, and the Hope House, which cares for abandoned, neglected or otherwise needy babies and infants. When the “UMEME” Electricity Board supply fails, generators (when working:) can supply
a few hours of needed electricity. There is a smattering of solar power on site and even computers with internet access! Some say the changes are good; others miss the “good old days.”
Twenty-eight acres of family group gardens and additional school gardens help provide much of the daily food at Kasana. Crops are also harvested from Enterprise Farm’s 50+ acres and sold to help support the ministry financially. Three kilometers up the road is yet another site, the New Hope Vocational Institute (NHVI), where young men and women are trained daily in auto mechanics and metalworking, carpentry, masonry, weaving and tailoring. Adjacent to NHVI is New Hope Millers, a growing maize mill operation that provides a valuable service to the community while also generating income for the ministry in its desire to be as self-sufficient as possible.
Kasana is like a bee hive: people constantly going in and out, working, walking, and moving. Children playing football, students being called in for classes, staff gathering for fellowship, families working in the gardens, guitar lessons being held under a tree outside, oxen plowing fields. During each school holiday, university students, vocational students, A-level students, and those doing apprenticeships are welcomed home to Kasana. The lives of over 700 people are constantly intertwined.
To donate to the Kasana Children’s Centre click here: Kasana donation
