News....news....news....

July 2009 -  it’s been a great fundraising month for us...

Home-baked cakes and treats went down a storm one Friday at Ashurst, raising £380;

We’re delighted to have the support of five competitors in the Zurich Ironman 2009. The justgiving site remains open if you’d like to register your support at www.justgiving.
com/2cc-zurich2009;

..and coming up, another bring and buy clothing night, this time with our very own stylist!

April 2009 - special thanks to Gemma and Nick who nominated the Rwenzori Trust for their wedding list.

February 2009 - the start of a new school year in Uganda and we’re delighted to be able to continue our sponsorship of 35 secondary school kids. Seven of the children from last year have left the project (due to poor exam results) and a new seven have joined the project.

January 2009 - the community trails in the forest land have been repaired and upgraded thanks to a generous donation from the Rwenzori Development Foundation. If you’re in Ruboni, go and see for yourself!

 

The Child Sponsorship Project

The Child Sponsorship Project (the “CSP”) started in January 2008 with 35 children being supported. We hope to maintain their funding to see each of those children complete Senior 4 (“S4”) (broadly equivalent to GSCE level) at the very least. We fundraise in order to maintain and, if possible, expand this project. Any support you are able to give would be greatly appreciated: please click here to donate through JustGiving.com. To support a child, we’d ask you to donate £6 per month. Primary education in Uganda is free of charge, but secondary education is not, hence our focus on sponsoring children through secondary school.  We believe that education is the best way to give the next generation opportunities which will allow them to be less reliant on the land, participate better in the modern world and be more aware of their rights and heritage.

Photographs of the children that are currently being supported can be accessed here. If there is a particular child you would like to sponsor, please email us. If you set up a regular donation without selecting a child, we’ll assign you a child unless you tell us you’d rather not. If you would like to receive regular updates on how your child is getting on at school, please email us with your email contact details.

How it works

Secondary school fees are approximately £72 per year per child, or £6 per month.  (Our numbers are approximate because different schools charge different amounts and also exchange rates fluctuate.)

Seventy per cent. of the money that we raise goes to the schools of the children to pay a proportion of their school fees. The proportion that is paid is the higher of their termly fees or 50,000 Ugandan shillings (approximately £16.50) per term. Where 50,000 Ugandan shillings does not cover all school fees, the family of the children are required to make up the balance. This approach allows us to maximise the number of children that we support and, through parents having an economic interest, encourages the commitment to attending and doing well at school.

The remainder (thirty per cent.) of the money that we raise is used to fund local community projects (the “community pot”) and also pay local expenses. We keep local expenses to a minimum. Apart from a monthly retainer of 50,000 Ugandan shillings per term for the CSP Co ordinator, a local teacher called Bwambale Deo who runs the administration of the project in Ruboni, our other expenses are negligible. The costs of this website and our JustGiving subscription are paid for by the trustees personally. In short, you can be confident that your money is working hard and not being swallowed up in middle-man administration, and that’s the beauty of our small-scale charity!

Local community projects

The “community pot” of money is for community development projects. We have included this element in order to benefit the community as a whole, and to seek to reduce any resentment amongst families whose children are not currently supported by the project. The CSP committee (see below) has decided that the priority for the community pot money is to upgrade the facilities at the Ruboni Community Camp.

The Ruboni Community Camp is a recently-constructed eco-tourist facility, very close to the entrance to the Rwenzori Mountains National Park. In a beautiful setting, with fantastic views of the Portal Peaks, the Ruboni Community Camp offers great value tourist accommodation, in bandas (cottages), safari tents or pitches for your own tents. Built on eco-tourism principles, the camp has electricity provided by solar panels, smell-free efficient compost toilets and running water on a gravity flow system filtered through the Rwenzoris. The camp includes a restaurant, and local walks, traditional dances and local crafts are available. Revenues from the camp, after wages paid to the local staff, are pumped back into the camp for maintenance and improvements. For information about the latest milestones in the camp’s development, see our news on the left of each webpage. It’s hoped that in the near future the camp will generate sufficient revenues that the profits and the CSP “community pot” can be applied towards other community projects.

A link to the Ruboni Community Camp’s webpage is provided here.

If you’re interested in visiting the Ruboni Community Camp, further details are available here.

Selection criteria

Applications are made each autumn for children to start the new school year (which runs January to November, split into three terms). The CSP committee (see below) applies selection criteria including:

• Successfully completing primary school with good grades
• Living in local area
• Involvement of children or their parents with Ruboni community activities

CSP committee and accountability

The CSP committee comprises local elected parent, teaching, church and political representatives. The committee (headed by the CSP Co ordinator is obliged to prepare periodic reports (usually every term) concerning the progress of the project, enclosing copies of student reports and giving details of how the monies have been spent. This allows the Rwenzori Trust to monitor the project and ensure our money is being put to the best use, especially the “community pot”. The school fees payable by the Rwenzori Trust are paid by cheque from the CSP bank account in Kasese town to the schools and receipts are obtained and included in the reports.

The monies donated to the Rwenzori Trust in the UK are collected in our bank account from which termly transfers are made to Uganda. Although we pay a transfer fee to the bank every time we do a transfer, we don’t just do one transfer per year, in order to help us keep a better track of finances.

Future aspirations

The CSP is in its infancy but already we’re looking to the future. With primary eduation being free in Uganda and the Ugandan government spreading its universal education programme to S1 and S2 in many schools, we currently focus on topping up education to get students to S4 level. In future we’d like to help children through S5 and S6 (equivalent to A-levels) and also university, but it won’t surprise you to know that such further education gets expensive. We’re currently exploring the possibility of setting up a foundation to provide scholarships for university and we’ll keep you posted on our progress.