Education for Poor Children!

The past few months have been tough at SHARE Project and the Hammerslag School. Due to a lack of administrative support and a period without internet in Pallisa, we missed a very important due-dilligance report for GlobalGiving. By the time we resolved the issue and submitted the report, new and recurring donations had lapsed to the project. Thanks to the help of GlobalGiving's team, they were able to resolve the issue and fully reinmburse the school (a testiment to the organization for ensuring projects on its platform are properly vetted).  However, during this period we struggled to adequately care for and feed our boarding students, pay our teachers and staff a full salary, and to fund required state testing and other administrative costs. As a result, several boarding students were sent back to their guardians for a period of time. 

Despite the hardships, we have persevered and stayed in high spirits. We continued to teach, feed and house our rural and vulnerable population as best we could. In fact, the children start their end of term exams next week, which they have been studying hard for. And by the end of this year, our students will sit for the very first time at the national exam to join secondary education! 

When the recurring donations were reimbursed in late July, we were able to purchase food and living supplies for the boarding students, new scholastic materials, and to pay teachers their full salary. Some revenue went to the government as well to renew our training licence and operation permit (as is standard for all schools in Uganda). This is paid annually and requires a follow up with the Ministry of Education, which will take place in the next few weeks. Lastly, As pictured, we are working to complete the construction of desks for all the students. 

As these are the only new updates since the last report, I will finish by outlining our remaining needs/goals over the next quarter. Please consider giving as little as $10 recurring donation each month to support these efforts and ensure that we stay out of financial crisis; are able to feed, house and pay our staff the salaries they deserve. As always, we thank you for your generosity. 

Remainder of 2019 goals and financial needs:

• Pay teachers and support staff the national average, every month. This works out to a need of only $1,250 USD per year!
• Raise enough to cover the fees for the UNEB national exam for admission to secondary school. 20 students need to sit for the exam and it costs $10 per student ($200 total). Consider investing in the future of these hard working individuals by donating enough to cover the fees or one, or all of our students. 
• Complete construction of the primary one classroom. As pictured, they are still learning in a temporary shade outside the main school building. This would cost just 2,000 USD total including flooring, plastering for the walls, and constructing a black board, tables and chairs. 
• Raise money to cover healthcare costs of students suffering from sickle cell, malaria, HIV/Aids and other chronic illness. We have lost three kids in the past year to sickness, which could have been avoided with the proper access to healthcare, medications and also better awareness and counseling support to families in the community. 
• Complete construction of a seperate female latrine.
• Improve boarding conditions for students. Every child still needs a proper mattress, bedding and mosquito net.
• Improve the school feeding program. We are barely getting by and need to improve the nutritional intake of our students on a daily basis. Even small recurring donations will help ensure the boarding children are fed three healthy meals per day. 
• Maintain NGO office, wifi and other administrative costs (including licence, insurance and other fees necessary to keep the school legally registered in Uganda).
• Find international volunteer programs to help run the school. We are actively applying to partnerships in the UK and Australia so that we can find some relief in our day to day operations. 

As usual, we thank you for your continued support and donations to help educate rural and vulnerable children in Uganda.

Greetings friends and donors,

Since our last update at Share Project and the Hammerslag School, much of our efforts have continued as usual. The majority of our focus over the past few months has been to ensure the children receive adequate food, shelter and care at the school, and that our teachers are paid a fair and consistent wage each month. This has been difficult with the lack of recurring donations, however we remain positive that we will secure more partnerships in the future.

For now, Good Neighbors, a humanitarian NGO, has been our most reliable partner by sponsoring our boarding children with food and clothing supplies. To date, they sponsor 46 students, and in addition to providing basic living supplies to our orphaned and most vulnerable children, they have promised to buy the school a water tank to trap rainwater to solve our issues with providing clean/filtered water at the school. They have also started a program to provide sanitary towels to our female students and teachers, and sports uniforms to all the children. They also plan to assist in building a seperate latrine for the girls (however, this will require more land and space that we hope to fundraise for in the coming months).

We are worked diligently to enlist other organizations to donate supplies, complete the schools construction and to support continued programming.  Some of the organizations we have been in active conversation with or have submitted applications to include: Home of Good Hope, Peace Corps, Edinburgh Global Partnerships, Room to Read and Dubai Cares. Partnerships like these, and support from donors like you will be pivotal to maintaining or mission.

As for other updates at the school -- the children have started using the new classroom partition, installed to separate the nursery and primary one students. Children, teachers and parents are very happy about this new development and as a result the students’ population in the entire school has doubled in the last year. In the nursery alone the total population is over 100 children!

Since the start of 2019, the school has also attracted 10 newly qualified teachers from Kampala's teacher training college. Because there are no rooms for rent in the village, the new teachers are living at the school compound in spaces we have converted for use as a dormitory. We were able to install another solar light in these areas so that they have adequate light to prepare their lessons at night. We also purchased firewood, food and living supplies for the boarding students and teachers.

Another exciting development in our organization’s progress is our official registration as an NGO in Uganda. GlobalGiving donations have helped Share to pay the legal fees necessary to register in Uganda, Previously, we were operating as a Community Based Organization (CBO), which meant each year we had to process a new certificate; a costly and time consuming procedure. Now that we have internationally recognized NGO status, many more funding opportunities are available to us.

Finally, we remain in constant communication with beneficiaries (students, parents and community members) to ensure we are achieving desired outcomes. Although there is much to improve on, we have received powerful feedback from affected individuals who confirm that our programs are working and that students love the opportunity to learn. They have also stressed the importance of the school’s success in this extremely poor and rural of areas.

With that, I leave you with our most urgent needs that we hope to fulfill with any leftover funds:

• School desk and chair construction: there is big shortage here, with some children seated on the desks and others on the floor. We need 100 desks and chairs, which will cost about 500 USD.
• Textbooks to prepare for Uganda's national examinations. Our upper primary students are about to sit for their Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). 100 USD will purchase the necessary textbooks for them and future students to more adequately prepare.
• Although Good Neighbors has agreed to help construct an extra latrine, we need funds to purchase more land and supplies to create a safe and healthy facility.
• Money for flooring in the nursery and primary one classrooms. The floors are currently packed dirt and present health risks to the little ones.

We face many challenges, including limiting funding and external resources but we hope that our hard work and passionate efforts will contribute to long-term change in our community!