Working at NGUVU Dairy

Dear Family and Friends,

We are and have been healthy as a family for over 2 months now! We are thankful for your prayers during October and November of last year when Genevieve was not feeling well. It turned out to be the preventative malaria medicine (called Malarone) that we had her on that was on that made her sick. It was a stressful time for Lauren and I and we are grateful it's behind us and that Genevieve and Aubrey Anne are doing well.

Our family is healthy and doing well in Uganda.

Both girls are growing up so fast! Aubrey Anne likes to come to the garden and see what I'm doing.

Aubrey Anne likes helping daddy in the garden.

I work with NGUVU Dairy in Gulu, Uganda. We make, package, and sell thousands of small yogurt pouches along roadsides, mainly in the villages, on the back of over 100 bicycles! During the month of November last year alone, we sold $28,000 in yogurt, all on the back of bicycles! We have two pouch sizes 140 grams (about 5 oz) and 300 grams (about 10 oz) each at a price of around $0.30 for the small pouch and $0.60 for the large pouch.

Yogurt, yogurt, and more yogurt!

NGUVU has 8 sales sites across northern Uganda which sell yogurt; Kamdini site is pictured below. Each site has around 20 bicycles, with cooler boxes on the back of each bicycle, and 10-15 salespersons, people we hire and pay a commission of 18%, to sell our yogurt. 

The bicycles lined up at Kamdini site ready for a day's work.

One of the biggest priorities of NGUVU is to develop young Ugandan people by giving them a job. Because of the history of northern Uganda, many young people lack the qualities of persistence, hard work, responsibility, etc. By giving our sales persons jobs, we are developing these character qualities in these young adults that we are hiring.

Yogurt sales persons preparing their cooler boxes of yogurt for the day's delivery.

The other big priority of NGUVU is the Christian trauma healing that takes place each year at each site. The training is carried out by a local pastor who we hire. This pastor uses Christian Trauma healing curriculum from the Ugandan Bible Society. The trainings last several days. I'm excited that NGUVU offers this trauma healing. There is so much trauma that people here have experienced from the war 20 years ago.

We also have local pastors who hold weekly devotions at each site.

Posters on the wall which were used for trauma healing.

More posters of the trauma healing.

One of the things I like about working with NGUVU is that I get to work with a team of people. I enjoy working with the other staff together on projects and the day to day activities.

My work mates; Emma (left), Patrick (right)

Speaking about NGUVU Dairy on the local radio with Emma (right).

Please pray for NGUVU Dairy. It's not easy trying to run a business like this. The goal is that NGUVU can be financially self sustaining, but it has not yet reached that point. Pray for sales persons; we struggle to find sales persons because riding a bicycle and selling yogurt isn't something that many people here want to do, even though there is good money in it for the hard-working sales persons.

That's all for now.

Eric, (Lauren, Aubrey Anne, and Genevieve)