Most of the children on Whidbey Island are cared for well. Their parents provide them with dressers full of clean T-shirts and jeans. As we head into the winter months, they’ll be dressed in warm jackets, and when we make it into summer their skin will be slathered with sunscreen.

Many children in Northern Uganda aren’t cared for at all. Their parents were lost during times of war, disease and political unrest. As the youngsters wake up each morning they search hopelessly for clean water and food. Their skin is crawling with parasites. They’ve been thrown away.

In 1994, a holistic care program known as Watoto Child Care Ministries was established to aid struggling women and children. Communities of orphanages were built with each home holding only eight children, allowing them more personal relationships with their house mothers.

In 2005, a local Watoto Team was born after a Watoto children’s choir visited Oak Harbor Lutheran Church.

Members from the Lutheran Church, First United Methodist Church and Saint Stephen’s Anglican have visited Uganda multiple times to help improve the Watoto villages. On their most recent trip this summer, the members began constructing a new medical center in Gulu.

Over the last year, they worked to raise $120,000 to put towards the center.

“The old facility was like a Victorian nightmare,” member Sharon Erickson said. The team said the old center’s beds were iron, the mattresses were torn, there were no sheets, no mosquito nets, no full-time staff and plenty of horrendous smells.

The new medical center will be completed by Jan. 1, 2011, and the team is currently working to raise an additional $15,000 for medical supplies.

Team member Janann Roodzant said none of the successes would happen without the island’s incredible generosity. All of the money raised previously came from local donations.

“We’re constantly fundraising and not giving up,” Roodzant said. “Oak Harbor has been extremely supportive of this team.”

Donations towards the project can be dropped off at the church with the memo “in care of Watoto.”

Once the medical center is finished, some of the Watoto team members will visit in June 2011 with U.S. doctors to help train and educate staff for the hospital. The team members said their passion for the Ugandan children is unwavering and that their joy in serving is immeasurable.

“The babies that were on garbage piles and thrown away are now clean, happy and cared for,” Roodzant said.

“They’d give you the shirt off their backs if you needed it, and it might be the only one they have,” Erickson added.

Dr. Skip Lycksell, one of the team leaders, said because English is the children’s first langauge, the team has been able to bond with the kids without barriers. He said witnessing the progress the children have made has had a big impact on their mission.

“They have the look of well taken care of children,” Lycksell said. “That motivated us to help them help themselves and create new leaders in Uganda.”

For more information about the Watoto team’s work, check out the OHLC Watoto Team Facebook page.