Smiling Hearts Africa: “Making Dance Great Again!”

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Our friend Ziko has a serious passion for Yoga & Dance, and he’s spent a lot of time helping the kids in the community around Naguru (Kampala, Uganda) through “The Smiling Hearts Foundation”, which he started from scratch.

Ziko is a brilliant young man, who doesn’t let obstacles stand in his way. For example on his own, he has created a YouTube channel that has nearly 1,000 subscribers, and one of their videos has had over 100k views!

Check it out, and please also subscribe to the channel here:

So we wanted to lend Ziko a hand, by writing this blog, and giving him and the foundation a presence on our website. We also want to take donations on his behalf – more on this later.

 

NOW OVER TO ZIKO HIMSELF, TO TELL YOU ABOUT HIS FOUNDATION

I am Simon Peter Odongtoo a passion driven youth living in the slum of Naguru go-down, Kampala Uganda, working hard to improve well-being and nurture talents to promote self-reliance and sustainability among children in my community, I am mostly known has ‘’Ziko Torah’’ by the communities I always volunteer with in Uganda.

I started my community service in 2014 from Northern Uganda, then later moved to central Uganda, reaching out to different slum communities in Uganda teaching dance, yoga, acro-yoga and meditation as a tool to create a positive impact in the slums of Uganda, where you grow up watching fellow youths and young children getting into stealing and robbery, drug abuse, girls engaging into early marriage and many dropping out of school because of the bad influence from the society and hardships of getting school fees by parents.

Another great video on the Smiling Hearts YouTube Channel!

Slums are areas of a broad social and health disadvantage to children and their families due to extreme poverty, overcrowding, poor water and sanitation, substandard housing, limited access to basic health and education services, and hardships e.g. high unemployment, violence e.t.c.

With all this years of community long serving experience with one heart, I founded SMILING HEARTS AFRICA FOUNDATION (SHAF).

SMILING HEARTS AFRICA FOUNDATION is a youth led and passion driven community based organisation that uses dance, yoga, acro-yoga, meditation, communication skills mentorship programs to create a positive impact among young people in our society.

Living in the society of the poorest and hardest-working people who normally depend on a mere daily income from manual jobs and small businesses which is common in the slum of Naguru.

I intend to provide the most in need children in my community with education, food, water and medical care, since its every child’s right. But the possibility entirely depends on your kind donation and support towards this big dream from the Ghetto where no one believes that any youth from the same society can do such a thing.

 

HOW YOUR DONATION WILL HELP!

  1. Providing basic school requirements (school fees, Pens, Pencils, Books, Shoes, Clothes and Bags)
  • 1 dozen of 2 quire counter books = $8
  • 1 pair of school shoes = $11.5
  • Clothes, have different prices = ($2, $3, $4, $5, $6) iv. 1 school bag = $11
  1. Providing basic family Nutrition food program (Beans Posho, Salt, Rice, Sugar, and Soap)
  • it costs the family of 4 members $4 to have a full day meal.
  • it costs the family of 8 members $8 to have a full day meal.
  1. Buy Yoga Mats to help create convenient environment for the yoga outreach classes.
  • 1 Yoga Mat costs $11

 

ADDITIONAL WAYS TO SUPPORT

  • Share this link with your friends, families and social network
  • watch and subscribe to the YouTube Channel
  • Connect Ziko Torah with people in the global yoga and dance community who can support his mission and sponsor his work.
  • Follow Ziko Torah and Smiling Hearts Africa Foundation on their social media platform to be updated with current projects and find out ways to support their mission.

Social platforms. Instagram, facebook and twitter

@smilingheartsafricafoundation

www.instagram.com/smilingheartsafricafoundation

@zikotorah

For me to be successful in this mission, I call upon your support to shar

May you all be blessed.

Ziko Torah

WAYS TO DONATE FUNDS

This part is a work in progress – we were using GoFundMe but it had certain limitations, that made it hard to get the cash directly into the hands of who needs it, without incurring costly transaction fees.

If you’d like to make a donation please email Ziko and Marcus and we’ll tell you the best way!

Ziko: odongtoo44@gmail.com

Marcus: marcus@glovesandglory.org

Thank you for reading this. We will update this blog accordingly, with news about the kids and Ziko’s work in the slums.