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Learning Therapy Skills Online

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How do you keep children with disabilities, who need constant therapy, continue accessing it when the centers of access are closed? How do you make sure that the small gains you have made are not lost? How do you keep adding on to the small blocks that you have painstakingly built with children over time? Those and more were the questions that SMU staff and volunteers were faced with when gathering places including the Stars Day Care Center were closed. In June 2021, Uganda recorded a surge in the cases of COVID-19 which was code-named the second wave. Results of COVID-19 tests done on June 8th, 2021 confirmed 1,438 new cases, the highest number of cases recorded on a single day since the first case was reported back in March of 2020. This second wave of COVID-19 prompted the government of Uganda to institute a second 42 days’ lockdown that ran from June 18th, 2021 up to the end of July 2021. As a result, many institutions, including the Stars Day Care and Learning Center closed
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Raising Awareness about People with Disability

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A SMU staff shares information about persons with disabilities with a community member during the awareness walk. Stars Ministry Uganda (SMU) exists to release every child and individual with disability to their full potential so they can live independent and productive lives . SMU desires to see the needs of People with Disabilities (PWDs), including their need for God, being met by the church. One of the strategies through which SMU achieves its mission is through raising awareness about the needs of people with disabilities. SMU conducts awareness campaigns to achieve this objective. Through awareness campaigns, SMU aims to highlight the reality of disability in its immediate community and to empower community members to take action in meeting the needs of people with disability (PWDs) that are closest to them.  People with disability are among the categories of people that were most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the limitation of travel due to the COVID-19 Movement res
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Increasing SMU’s Physiotherapy Capacity

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The SMU Director in an Oline Learning Session Physiotherapy is one of the most important aspects of Stars Ministry Uganda (SMU) services to children with disabilities, whom we call Stars at SMU.  The situation of Stars, who are mostly immobile, is made worse by limited care by caregivers who are either away looking for their families’ livelihoods, or without knowledge on how to offer Physiotherapy to their immobile children. Physiotherapy became even more instrumental during the COVID-19 season, where movements have been limited. This need was heightened by the fact that the places where these services could be attained remain closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown. “We don’t want our children to retrogress from the progress we had made with them before the lockdown”, reported the SMU Director, Mrs. Sylvia Kalyebara. To increase SMU’s capacity to serve the Stars better, our physiotherapist, SMU Director and a few parents of Stars have been undertaking some online training in physiotherapy
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I can swim even when am not able to walk: Swimming Benefits for People with Disabilities.

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Stars taking part in a hydrotherapy session Did you know that a good number of people with disabilities (PWDs) who cannot walk can actually play in the water? Did you know that water play or hydrotherapy as water play is technically known, has great benefits for people with disabilities, especially those that are immobile and cannot move on their own?   Unfortunately, for many people with disabilities, this opportunity has not been accessed. There are varied reasons why many people with disabilities, and especially those in the context within which Stars Ministries Uganda (SMU) serves, have not or cannot access water play/swimming opportunities. Some caretakers are not aware or fear to let their PWDs play in the water. Yet for others, it is a lack of acceptance in their communities and therefore may not be easily allowed into a community swimming pool where other people are playing. And yet still, others cannot afford the costs involved in taking a PWD to a swimming pool considering th
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Creative Pricilla: The Potential of Children with Disabilities

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Pricilla and some of her craftwork   Meet Pricilla Kabasinguzi, the 14-year-old Star (a Star is a child with a disability), who lives with a brittle bones’ disability. Pricilla speaks well and can feed herself; everything else, however,  is  done with the help of another person. Pricilla lives with her mother who works as a cook. Her mother, however, has not worked since March 2020 because the institution where she works at halted operations due to COVID-19. Pricilla was registered with Stars Ministry Uganda (SMU) in 2014, when a church member introduced the work of SMU to her father . At that time, Pricilla could not express herself and had very low self-esteem, in addition to her disability. Her parents were afraid of releasing their daughter for fear that someone might break her already weak bones. SMU would later learn that this fear was also heightened by experiences that Pricilla had in a normal school, where both teachers and other school children were scared of handling her b
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Joy Through Home Therapy: The Story of James Lumisa

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James and a SMU Volunteer take a 'walk' during a home visit Physio and Occupational therapy are an important aspect of Stars Ministry Uganda's (SMU) mission of  reaching people with disabilities and their families . It is one of the avenues where the needs of people with disabilities, including their need for God, are being met. Through home physio  & occupational therapy programming, SMU has reached out to James, putting a little smile on his face. James was born with, and lives with multiple disabilities. He lives with an elderly single mother, in the Kirombe slum near Luzira, in Kampala. James is crippled in both legs and hands; he cannot walk, crawl, and neither can he feed himself or perform the activities of daily living independently . He can only sit and lie down in one place. He communicates through different signals that only the people close to him are able to interpret. James’ kind of disability is the kind which requires an available caretaker twenty-fou
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Physiotherapy in the COVID-19 Lockdown

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A Star undergoes a physiotherapy session at the Stars Ministry & Day Care Center For the last three months (April to June), many ministries and agencies were brought to a standstill in Uganda, due to the COVID-19 Lockdown restrictions. Stars Ministries Uganda (SMU) was no exception. For th e Stars (children with disabilities served by SMU), the Lockdown meant no weekly attendance at the Stars Ministry and Day Care Center.  This continues to be the case as most places that bring together more than fifteen people remain closed, including schools and churches. Inability to attend Day Care, heightened the need for the services often received at Center, especially physiotherapy for the Stars. SMU staff and volunteers have known all along, that one of the greatest needs among the Stars is Physiotherapy. This is often a result of the Stars’ inability to move on their own. The reasons for their immobility besides the physical disabilities are varied. Some are left alone at home because the
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