Jinja Connection

29 years old Allison Edwards was born and raised in Courtice Ontario. She went to school at Courtice North Public School, Courtice Secondary High School and graduated from Sir Sanford Fleming College with a diploma in Social Service Work.
 
After graduating College at the age of 19 she wanted to gain some life experience through many jobs in the Social Service field which included working at Community Living and as a Caseworker for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Clarington for 6 years. 

Going to Africa was always a dream of hers and little did she know that upon fulfilling that dream she would be realizing her life focus.  After her Trip to Uganda in Jan of 2011 it was clear to jer that there was a need to support the street children who were being overlooked by Uganda as a whole. 

 

Upon her return she immediately started planning her return trip which would be to serve the Ugandan street children!  Allison is now the Director and Founder of Jinja Connection, which has been up and running for almost 3 years.  Jinja Connection has been able to resettle over 100 children back with their families.

 

Allison is also a foster Mom to a 14 yr old Ugandan boy.  He has been living with her for over a year and is doing great and making strides to potentially being resettled back with his family.

The future plan for Jinja Connection is to serve more children and send them to school.  One of their main focuses this year was home tracing and resettlement. This means making the trek to wherever the child has come from, finding their families, counseling them on whatever the reasons were the child left, enrolling the child in school and then staying in touch weekly with both family and child to make sure everything is going smoothly.