Uganda School Updates

On the way back from the refugee camp, I was able to visit our school in Ndagga. As you know, we completed the construction of the secondary school two years ago. Because of the pandemic, our schools have been closed off and on over the last two years, but both the primary and secondary schools were reopened this January and remain in operation.

We currently have a total of about 330 students enrolled in our schools, 180 in the primary school and 150 in the secondary school. We are facing a big financial challenge right now because many of our students have lost their sponsorship during the pandemic. We need to recruit more sponsors to help our students continue their education for just $30 a month. Please share our story with your friends and family!

The Ugandan government has recently mandated that all secondary schools provide a prevocational training program in one of five areas: nutrition and food technology; fashion and design; agriculture; mechanics; information technology.

We believe this governmental mandate is actually a good one, as it will allow students not attending university to develop marketable skills to secure gainful employment.

We had in fact already planned to implement prevocational training at our school. At the same time, we did not expect a sudden mandate from the government, which required us to speed up our plans. As you can imagine, developing this program requires a significant budget, and we were not sure we were ready for it. However, we were able to meet part of the new requirements through an unexpected generous donation from one of our supporters in December. We are also still exploring the possibility of operating a business such as a commercial farm that will eventually enable the school to be self-supporting!

Finally, the school has recently converted its manual bookkeeping system to QuickBooks, which had been long overdue, and I was introduced to their new system during my visit.