By Charles Olupot | Project Leader
Happy Holidays friends and donors,
These past few months have been trying on our school and organization. We regret to inform you that in early November we lost two students to Malaria related illness. These losses have left a gaping hole in our community and our hearts. Fortunately, the children were with their families at the time of their deaths. Recent disbursements have helped a lot in this time of loss, especially in transporting the children and members of the school community to attend burials. The funds also contributed to medical expenses and providing food for the ceremony. We have you to thank for our ability to offer this to the families.
Beyond this, donations have gone to the usual places; providing food, supplies and medical care for the children, and to support the teachers salaries. Despite the recent tragedies, the students and teachers continue in high spirits and look forward to the new year. We remain determined to sustain our mission of providing an education, shelter and love to the most vulnerable children of Pallisa.
That said, every small bit counts as we continue to provide each child living at the school with adequate food and living supplies, including a proper mat or mattress and a mosquito net. The latter is of utmost importance to reduce the risk of further deaths due to mosquito-borne illness. Therefore, we request more donations to help improve the children’s sleeping conditions. We will be adding the cost of a mosquito net to the donation list shortly (priced at around $12 USD) so that you can purchase one for the students. Additional funds attained over the next quarter will go to provide for their medical needs and transport in times of emergencies.
Secondly, future funds will be needed to construct a classroom for the primary seven (P7) class, which we hope to complete next year in time for our first students to take their exams for secondary education. Additionally, the nursery students continue studying outdoors in the shade (see photo). Our long-term goal is to provide a permanent classroom for them as well.
Lastly, GlobalGiving's full audit report, completed by Chris and Jamie was finally completed. It was very helpful in understanding where we are as an organization, and how we can continue to grow in a sustainable fashion. I have provided an excerpt of their findings below as an additional update for you. Please also find a handful of new photos of the students, including a video of the children singing in the classroom.
From everyone at SHARE Project and the Hammerslag School, we thank you once more for your repeated generosity and wish you the happiest of holidays and a Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Charles Olupot
Global Giving Audit Report Excerpt
"SHARE has made great progress over the last few years in supporting the construction of the school building. There are now a number of basic classrooms, toilets, and some accommodation for teachers which altogether is helping to provide education for around 200 children. This has been largely possible due to the donations of one family in particular upon which the project is very reliant. The project has received all its funding to date from Global Giving.
In terms of further construction, it has been identified that more toilets are needed to ensure gender separation. In addition, at least one further classroom could be built, as the nursery classes are currently taking place under a tarpaulin. Purchasing land to expand the compound, and improving the standard of accommodation for the teachers and boarders are some of a number of areas that the project would like to address going forward.
Project staff also talked about plans to expand their work to include support for community members and the families of some of the students, as well as considering if there was a way that they could support youth with some employability skills.
It was noted, however, that at present the project regularly struggles to pay the salaries of teachers and support staff in full. These are set at 100,000 and 50,000 Ugandan shillings respectively, but are often limited to 70-80,000 and 20-30,000. Payment of salaries is taken from, and dependent on, the amounts of funding received from the parents who are able to make financial contributions. This is likely to have a negative impact on the morale of the teachers and should be addressed as quickly as possible, before any expansion of the school itself is considered.
There is support from another NGO, called Good Neighbour, which is supporting 33 students with their food, materials, and uniforms. Aside from that and financial contributions from the community, the project is wholly dependent on Global Giving.
We encourage SHARE to work on expanding supporter base, with a particular focus on securing recurring donors (giving small amounts) who can then be the focus of further campaigns around construction, purchasing of land etc. Running a crowdfunding campaign could be a way to achieve this. Moreover, by considering timings, this strategy could potentially run alongside a GG matching campaign.
The school meets an obvious need within the community and it is clear that the pupils would not be receiving an education were it not for SHARE and the work that they do.
We discussed the importance of attracting some recurring donors to the project given the need to meet ongoing costs as a priority, in addition to the extra costs of further construction."
Links:
By Charles Olupot | SHARE Project Leader
By Chris Manion and Jamie Nunn | GG Evaluators
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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