We’re encouraging supporters to bake and sell cakes for brakes – flans for vans – biscuits for toolkits….anything you like really!

To join in the fun, contact Mary Sumner House for posters for your cake stall or strawberry tea (or any other yummy event!), and they also have fliers to get your whole branch, youth group, class or office involved and excited! Once you’ve got something arranged – tell us what it is, and we’ll tell the world!

Downloadable A5 colour poster: WheelsAppeal2010_A5flyer

Using the website Global Village Fair (click on the link) or leaflet you can choose from a range of ethical gifts for any occasion. Whether in memory of somebody, as a birthday present or for a wedding gift, your purchase will be helping families around the world in tough circumstances by supporting the work of Mothers’ Union.

Gifts available include:

• the gift of training in bee-keeping and mushroom-growing – £7.50
• knowledge and training in our Family Life Programme which we run across much of Uganda – £38.00
• vocational training in setting up tailoring and sewing businesses, to women and girls in countries where there’s hardly any secondary school education – £100

Local Mothers’ Union group leaders should have received a supply of the brightly coloured leaflets in a recent mailing from the head office of Mothers’ Union (Mary Sumner House), but if you don’t want to use the website, or want further supplies of the leaflet contact them on 020 7222 5533.

Make A Mothers Day, our ethical gift catalogue specifically for Mothering Sunday, will be back just after Christmas with it’s own website and new leaflet for 2010.

Hand washing stand at Lowero Model Home in Uganda (photographed August 2006)

The government recently recognised the unique contribution that faith-based organisations like Mothers’ Union make in delivering development and connecting with community needs.

As part of its white paper “Building our Common Future” the Department for International Development have said they will be doubling funding to to faith-based groups engaged in such work.

In the mean-time Mothers’ Union is continuing to help an increasing number of communities in Uganda (and soon Kenya) bring about their own development through the Family Life Programme.

Mothers’ Union also welcome the white paper’s recognition that the multiple challenges created by growth, climate change and conflict, can not be solved by the state alone.

It is really encouraging to know that Mothers’ Union is already seeking to do just what the white paper is encouraging; linking with churches, regional and national governments, and fellow development organisations to bring about global solutions to problems which communities experience at a very local level.

This is particularly obvious through the Mothers’ Union Literacy and Development Programme. Click to download an information sheet: MULDP update March 2009.

Although this ground-breaking scheme has helped 45,000 people become accredited literate in Burundi, Sudan and Malawi, Kajo-Keji Diocese in southern Sudan is not yet one where the scheme has been formally launched – due to lack of funds. (Mothers’ Union in Kajo-Keji Diocese is linked to Mothers’ Union members in the Diocese of Winchester.)

The Literacy and Development programme has recently been reviewed, and despite it’s success Mothers’ Union is trying to improve it still further by increasing the financial skills taught in the numeracy part of the course, so that people can understand how to create and manage household budgets and organise the simple profit and loss accounts needed for business development and income generating projects. It is now partnering Five Talents International to achieve this.

However, this Literacy and Development programme alone needs £1 million to fund this development and role it out into new diocese in identified as being in most need of the skills it can provide. Kajo-Keji is one such diocese.

If you would like more information about the Literacy and Development Programme or the Family Life Programme, please contact us using the email at the bottom right of your screen. If you wish to make a donation to the development work of Mothers’ Union please post it to our contact details.

Without your interest and help this work can not be expanded.

As an example of what you can find there, click on the attachment below which is an update on the Family Life Programme. This has been so successful in the Ugandan diocese where it is operating, that Mothers’ Union members in Kenya have been visiting it to experience the training and see the benefits for themselves!

Read more here: flp_december_2008

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