As part of ongoing community outreach activities an UNMISS team paid a visit to the Hope for South Sudan Orphanage and School in Torit. The facility accommodates two hundred children, eighty boys and one hundred and twenty girls aged between the ages of 1 to 14.  It also provides eight primary school classes as well as organizes extra curriculum sports activities such as football, volleyball and athletics.

Possessing over 400 acres of land it houses over 700 mango trees and 300 orange trees which will bear fruit this year for the first time since they were planted (about 5 years ago). The orphanage is planning to sow more fruit trees along with sorghum and other vegetables during this year’s planting season so as to become self-sufficient.  The children are shown how to plant and protect crops by cultivating and weeding.
 
The Director of the facility, Pastor Romano Oguma, said he has employed fifty six workers including thirteen trained teachers, four social workers and, two nurses.  A number of residential mothers are also employed and they help with the laundry and provide assistance for the younger children.  He said the children, some as young as 11 months, are from all the tribes within the state.

“These children are all from the tribes of Eastern Equatoria”, Oguma said.

He said the biggest challenges are the lack of sponsors and the lack of building space to accommodate new arrivals.
   
Oguma added, “the biggest challenge is we don’t have enough sponsors, we don’t have enough buildings, I wish we could take more children than what we are currently able to manage”

UNMISS Head of the Torit field office, Ms. Mary Cummins, appreciates the work being undertaken, particularly that the children are being educated. The children demonstrated their skills to the visitors by telling stories in English.

“The teachers are doing a very important job in educating the children and it is encouraging to see the work that is going on here”, Ms. Cummins said.

Adiye Beatrice, the Matron, stressed that children get adequate food along with the harvest from the orphanage garden.

“We get food from Nairobi through our sponsors and we also get food from our own garden here”, she said.