We have been running our Work 4 A Living Center for about a year now and we are really beginning to see the fruit from this program! The best thing that has happened is training up a Ugandan facilitator. Jennifer Mugisha was one of my students that came through the program. Her brother was in my first class and was able to get a job as a dental assistant at a dental clinic in Jinja the day he graduated from the program. Jennifer saw the changes that Work 4 A Living had on her brother and wanted to be part of the program even though she was finishing university. She was an excellent student and it soon became clear that she would be an excellent facilitator for the program. She was trained at the beginning of the year and is currently running her third Work 4 A Living two-week course.

We now have our own training center located inside the Source Cafe, which is a very popular cafe on Main Street in Jinja. We have been borrowing space to run our trainings, so it is so nice to have our own location. This makes it easier for students to find us. We also have office space so Jennifer and I have a place to work and meet with students.

We have received some really good feedback from employers who have employed our students. We have had 13 students get jobs already this year. This may not seem like a huge number, but given the high level of unemployment in Uganda, this is amazing news! Many of these students have been unemployed for years and are now receiving an income! Without an income, people are forced to beg, borrow, or steal, so we rejoice for every job our students find.

We have also had 4 new businesses started this year as a result of our training program. We rejoice even more for this news because when businesses are started, the student becomes a job creator instead of a job seeker!

And the best news of all…we have  had 11 of our students make commitments to Christ during our classes! Praise God! This is what Work 4 A Living is all about!

We have begun a new discipleship program called Encounter that the students that make commitments to Christ will be slotted into beginning next week. We are so excited for this new program!

Speaking of new programs, on July 3rd, we will begin a service and hospitality training program called SERV. Service and hospitality are big business in a tourist area like Jinja so we are very excited to be able to train in service excellence. This will be a full-day, two-week class where we will cover service excellence, character, and waitering/waitressing.

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