It was joy and fun on Thursday, July 22, as the children of Toro Babies Home in Fort Portal City received support from the Rev. Samuel Murangi.

The home located in Central Division of the tourism city has struggled to operate due to a lack of funds, space, and other challenges.

New Vision published a story earlier this month calling upon wellwishers to come to the rescue of the babies.

Monica Rubombora, who spearheaded the fundraising drive to aid the Home, said on Thursday that the Murangi family and friends from Pennsylvania, United States, contributed over sh8.5m to buy food supplies for the children for the next six months.

"We came here and made an assessment the situation was terrible. The home had accumulated a lot of debts and we had to mobilize resources to help the children," Rubombora said.

Rubombora commended the Murangi Family and his friends for supporting the children during these challenging times of the pandemic and called on other people to follow suit.  

She asked the local community to help the facility in terms of funding and other basic needs, saying that the task of seeing the Home exist for many years and serve its intended purpose, needs collective efforts.

According to the Matron, Betty Kemigisa, the Home has, since its inauguration in 1970, helped more than 9,340 children in the Tooro Sub-region, but it does not get any government support. 

She said that all the finances that they get to run the day-to-day activities at the facility are from well-wishers and are, in most cases, too little to solve their problems. 

Currently, the Home has 40 children, and according to Kemigisa, it is hard to feed or cloth these children, some of whom were abandoned by their parents while others are orphans. 

“We have been struggling with feeding the children at the home because of finances. I am happy that some concerned Ugandans are coming up to rescue us,” Kemigisa said.

Toro Babies' Home was started on September 19, 1970, by the Anglican and Catholic churches in Toro under Bishops Jonathan Rwakaikara and Serapio Magambo, both of whom have since passed on. 

The initial funding came from the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides of Norway to help the homeless and abandoned children.

 Murangi a priest in Pennsylvania in the United States, said that he had launched a fundraising drive to help the children at the home.

“We are mobilizing support from our Christians to help the children who at times lack food. The home has also been operating under heavy debts which we are going to clear,” Murangi said.