Plant and Grow …. Start with one and then were some....
Tamarind is entering into a new season and the old is becoming new. We are casting our vision again and planting our feet solidly after 10 years’ work. At this time, we either make a choice to stop or continue. Tamarind will continue to RESTORE>REBUILD>RESOURCE the local community in northern Uganda.
Tamarind has RESTORED dignity by providing full time, part-time, and contract work to over 50 people in the last 12 moths.
Tamarind has helped businesses REBUILD, develop, and grow, even in financially hard times. We have done this by giving advice, coaching in business building strategies, supporting in tough times and encouraging them to keep going.
Tamarind has given RESOURCES to farmers by educating them in cross cropping and seasonal planning and planting. Tamarind has moved into the local community to be amongst the local people where only a chain-link fence and a couple of banana trees separate us and our neighbours. We want to inspire people on the ground to be all they can be not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. We want them to have a wholistic view of living and livelihood. As we develop stronger relationships with people we work with, our neighbours, we share our spiritual walk with them and how a relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in living a whole life.
We are so fortunate that the pandemic has not impacted us, so far, in the devastating and crippling ways it has in other parts of the world. We still have the opportunity to meet and greet people face to face, not in a large scale but in a one on one or small group setting. We take this opportunity to equip people physically through advice, guidance, and education and emotionally by listening and caring about their every-day needs, coaching them in ways to help themselves, spiritually discipling and praying for individuals.
Tamarind is a wholistic community-based organisation that sees every individual as unique and full of potential to be all that they were created to be. A fully functioning, motivated, creative, self-sustainable soul that is aware that even though they are surrounded by poverty and constraints of poverty they do not need to stay in poverty—they have the resources to move forward in life.
On a practical note, over the last 12 months Tamarind has managed to move into the Operation Centre in Bardege Te-Dam just 10 minutes out of town centre, which enables us work in the community with the people on the ground. In this community, we have demonstration self -sustainable projects in chickens, goats, basic cropping, small-scale orchid fruit trees, and we have just added rabbit rearing. We are teaching the community how to sustain their livelihood and do small scale business to generate income for large overheads such as school fees and medical.
In addition to the Operation Centre, we have a 6-acre farm where we are teaching basic farming skills to a community in Pagak, 2 hours from the South Sudan border. Here we are also teaching demonstration self-sustainable projects in chickens and cross cropping. We also have a training facility and store house we would love to expand and use to its full capacity.
I continue to work with women creating handmade paper bead designer jewellery. You can follow us on Instagram @thetribetamarind. Currently, we sell locally in cafes, a chain store in Kampala called Banana Boat, and a new shop in Gulu called Mtindo (which is about to launch in the USA). We are also selling to groups in Germany and the USA.
Please continue to share and support our journey with us through prayer, finances, and telling our story.
We would love to hear from you and are happy have online catch ups with anyone who would like to. Please contact us for a connect meeting where we would love to share our vision, connect with you and pray for you and your needs in this world changing time.
Blessings and kind regards,
Chris and Sarah Ochaya