Ugandans Adopt

Categories
adoption Uncategorized

Child’s i 2012 Media Campaign

 

Our Adoption & Fostering campaign billboard in Kampala

 

Although adoption is slowly becoming more common in Uganda, there is still a great need for new foster and adoptive parents, especially for older children and boys.

The aim  of 2012 media campaign was to increase our number of potential adoptive parents, as well as introducing the concept of short and long term foster care to Ugandans with the hope that we would be able to recruit 2 long term foster carers for children who have outgrown Malaika Babies Home.

I came out from the UK for 6 weeks to produce this campaign, and started negotiating with companies as soon as I landed, trying to ensure that we could agree advertising deals as soon as possible.

We were lucky enough to have the amazing Limehouse Creative team on board for this campaign. They designed both of our billboards free of charge, and did a great job. We organised a photo shoot with Kampala based photographer Anne Ackermann, and spent a stressful few hours on the roof of a local shopping centre trying to capture images that would work for our campaign.

 

Joey, the first child to be adopted from Malaika was our billboard star, appearing on both billboards, and we have had lots of comments from people who’ve seen his face looking down at them whilst they are stuck in traffic on Jinja Rd telling us how powerful his image is.Ad Concepts kindly gave us 2 months advertising space for free, and the 8 metre by 10 metre billboard is in a great location.

For the first time we  decided to advertise on digital billboard screens – one at the large Oasis shopping mall, and one in one of Kampala’s busiest taxi parks.

Emmanuel with Rogers at Radio Simba producing our radio ads for the media campaignWe also produced a television advert to run on NTV, featuring family support worker Lydia and her family. Lydia has adopted her two youngest children, and the whole family got involved in the filming of our advert, with the youngest two boys fascinated by our camera equipment!

[youtube=http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aVjqnxiCZc]

Although most of the content for our media campaign was produced in English, we decided to run a series of adverts in the local Luganda language on Radio Simba. We’re grateful to Rogers Mugerwa and his team for their continued support of the work that we’re doing.

 

We produced a Talk Show to run on national tv station NTV, and our amazing panel of guests, James Kaboggoza the Assistant Commissioner for Children, social worker Barbra and adoptive parent Christina Sempebwa debated issues connected to foster care and adoption as well as taking viewers calls. Presenter Ben Mwine did a great job, and the whole team felt extremely proud once the programme came off air.

Early in this trip I was asked to produce a documentary for the Ugandan government exploring Alternative Care. Myself and media volunteer Emma Hegarty spent a week working flat out on this projec

t and the finished documentary aired immediately after the Talk Show.

The first media campaign that we ran in 2011 resulted in over 150 potential adoptive parents contacting us, and to date 30 of our children have now been adopted. They are enjoying the chance to grow up in loving supportive families and we very much hope that this year’s campaign will result in similar outcomes for more of the children currently resident at Malaika Babies Home.

Categories
adoption open day open day event

Adoptive Parents Coffee Morning

Families for Children hold regular coffee mornings and training session for adoptive and prospective adoptive parents. This is usually a moment where parents who are adopting or thinking about adoption, meet together for a cup of coffee to share experiences, challenges, common issues on adoption and  gain support from each other.

 

 

Adoptive and prospective adoptive parents listen  to the main speaker of the day during the last coffee morning get together.

A big number of  Adoptive and prospective adoptive parents showed up at the last  Coffee Morning that was held  on 23rd March 2013 s at CRANE/VIVA Offices in Namirembe.We had a great time getting to know each other, sharing experiences and laughing over our cups of coffee.

Please mark  20th April 2013 on your calendars. It will be the day when   a one day adoptive and prospective adoptive parents training  will be conducted from 9:00am to 3:30pm .A contribution by each  parent attending of  20,000 shillings only  goes towards their break tea, Lunch and certificates at the end of the training.

You are also encouraged to inform other prospective and adoptive parents and fostering parents about these events or forward these dates to them and encourage them to attend as well.

For more information: Email Roger Mbazira at [email protected]