Help vulnerable children go to SAMaritan Schools!

Still in Lockdown….

When I wrote my last report no-one could have imagined what an impact the coronavirus pandemic would have worldwide. I never envisaged the impact it would have on my own personal situation, let alone the devastating impact that it is having in Uganda and the consequential restrictions on our Stichting Kinderhulp Afrika (KHA) projects.

The Ugandan nation has now been in lockdown for over 14 weeks. Schools and colleges remain closed and unfortunately no date has yet been set when the children and students will be allowed to return. General movements are still restricted, and social distancing is in place, although this is almost impossible due to the over-crowded conditions that most families and communities live in. The motorbike taxis, boda-bodas, are permitted to transport goods but not passengers and this has led in part to huge increases in the costs of daily living. Food prices have also rocketed following more stringent border controls, and to add to the challenges a plague of locusts has decimated crops!

 As a consequence, the economic crisis in Uganda is growing by the week. The continuing lockdown is fueling uncertainty about when things will improve, and many people are struggling to make ends meet and already going hungry. Fear of further economic problems and major health issues are looming and increasing anxiety across the country.

KHA is doing everything it can, and our attention has now switched from pre-coronavirus activities to providing emergency help to families in need. As there is no social security network or government financial support in Uganda, those not at work receive neither salary nor financial benefits. KHA set up a Relief Fund to provide our local staff with 70% of their normal salary and we are very grateful that generous donations have enabled us to meet our goal to be able to pay salaries until at least September.

Our immediate focus is now on the Ugandan families who are looking after the children who are on the KHA sponsor programme. An audit has revealed that around 100 of the 300 families concerned now need additional support as a direct result of the pandemic. These families are often taking care of several children as well as 'our' sponsor children, and money and food are starting to run out after so many weeks of lockdown. We have therefore also launched a Relief Fund specifically to help these families. If you would like to help out please consider making a donation via The Samaritan Day Care and Kindergarten (SAM) project on GlobalGiving: www.globalgiving.org/42553 or directly on website: www.kinderhulp-afrika.nl/en

Should you want to help these families out in a very generous way then on Wednesday, July 15, GlobalGiving is hosting a special Bonus Day for donations over $100, £80, € 89 . These donations will receive at least a 30% match. Bonus day starts at 9 a.m. ET in the USA, 14.00 hrs GMT in the UK and 15.00 hrs in Europe till midnight, 4:59 hrs and 5:59 hrs respectively.

For more infomation see: https://www.globalgiving.org/leaderboards/july-bonus-day-2020/

Not all doom and gloom!

I am delighted to tell you that, despite the coronavirus crisis, we have run a very successful campaign on GlobalGiving through a microproject to raise funds towards the costs of buying an innovative new education programme for SAM and the Samaritan Primary School, namely the Jolly Phonics Literacy & Grammar Programme.  We have already raised a total of £1,300 (€1416), which is well on the way to our goal at £2,200 (€2340) to purchase one package of the programme materials. The money raised so far has been ringfenced so that once our school can re-open and funds allow, we can purchase a first package of materials.  Ideally, we would like to buy 2 packages, so we will be continuing to fund raise and hopefully circumstances will enable us to repeat this microproject in 2021.  If you are interested in learning more about the Jolly Phonics approach to language teaching and our project to use it at SAM please go to:  https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/fund-jolly-phonics-literacy-and-grammar-programme/  and https://www.jollylearning.co.uk/

As I promised in the last report, we will post an update on the SAM project page as soon as the schools can return, this will hopefully be before another quarterly report is due!

I hope you will continue to follow and support the work we are doing in Uganda, and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me at jill@kinderhulp-afrika.nl, I would love to hear from you. 

Thanks again for your interest and support.

In the meantime stay safe and keep well.

Here’s an update from our frontline in Uganda in these challenging times.

Our Samaritan Day Care and Kindergarten, SAM, opened its doors for the new school term at the beginning of February. There were 37 pre-school and kindergarten pupils and 3 children attending our day care section. We had high hopes to enrol new pupils into the day care as word gets around that SAM is not only a school!

School was going really well, and our new teacher was settling in. She is a graduate student of NSVS, our secondary school on the campus. We now have three former students working at SAM, all selected solely on their qualifications and abilities, and we are delighted that for them as individuals and us as an organisation that the circle is complete! We will tell you more about these three incredibly special and talented teachers in a future report.

For now, however, we want to inform you about the current situation in Uganda concerning the Coronavirus Pandemic. The first case was recorded on March 17th. The President, Yoweri Museveni, immediately announced that all schools would close at the end of that week for a period of 32 days. This has subsequently been extended for another 3 weeks and further extensions must be anticipated.

SAM, together with our 2 other schools on the campus, took the necessary steps to close as the “Lockdown” became reality. Three of our Dutch volunteers, including one of the International Directors, managed to get safely repatriated, but the long-planned week to host a group of 10 ladies was of course postponed indefinitely. All our children, some 850 in total across all the campus, had to return home to their parents or guardians. As you can imagine this was a huge exercise, particularly as most schools in Uganda are boarding schools. Almost as soon as the announcement had been made the main roads around the capital, Kampala, and other major cities became gridlocked as people tried to pick up school students and the University students also travelled home.

Social distancing in Uganda, and certainly in a boarding school, leaves a lot to the imagination. See the attached photograph of students leaving University.  Luckily they were still able to use a Boda-Boda’s, the main form of transport for the majority of people in Uganda, before they too were banned.

At the time of writing the lockdown is working very effectively. The number of recorded cases is only 79 and 47 of these are known to have recovered. Thankfully, no one in Uganda has so far lost their life to this terrible disease. The lockdown restrictions are extremely strict. No one is allowed to use their car unless they are doing essential work. Consequently, food prices have soared, and many people are having to walk long distances to get basis food supplies and water. As in the rest of the world many individuals and families have lost their livelihoods and are struggling to survive.

Although SAM and our campus schools are closed, we are still paying staff salaries and carrying out maintenance jobs so that when the children are able to return everything is in good order and we are ready to continue with all our work. We have no idea when this will be, no idea how many children will be able to return due to the economic crisis, nor do we know what the government guidelines and ongoing restrictions will be. There are so many unknowns and there will be exceedingly difficult challenges to face for a considerable time to come. What we do know is how much we appreciate you, our donors and volunteers, who make our work in Uganda possible.  

We will post an update on the SAM project page as soon as the schools can return, but if you have any immediate questions please do not hesitate to contact me at jill@kinderhulp-afrika.nl.  I would love to hear from you and in the meantime stay safe and keep well.

Links:

• Organisation website