Girls Hygiene
Throughout rural Uganda, many girls experience a ‘week of shame’ when their menstrual periods start.
Often they are only able to use paper, banana fibres, leaves or old clothes. Sadly these leak and the girls are left embarrassed and ashamed. This leads to missing up to a week of schooling each month and in many schools up to 50% of girls have dropped out of schooling before their Primary Leaving Exams (PLE). This often leads to early marriage.
The answer? Please look at the work of www.afripads.com We are buying and distributing these reuseable pads in Eastern Uganda. Our implementing partner is ‘Society with a Vision’.
AFRIpads say ‘A monthly challenge, a sustainable solution’. We agree. Will you invest in girl’s education and join us in our quest? In our first 3 months, we have given 500 girls the opportunity to use AFRIpads and they are delighted.
Sponsorship
Every child deserves the opportunity to go to school. In Uganda this could be Kindergarten (3 years) and then Primary (7 years). 3 out of 10 children then go on to Secondary (4 or 6 years). The aim is that no child walks further than 5 kilometres to school (Pre-school or Primary). Most rural secondary schools are at least 15 kilometres and children board (hence the cost is too much and so few go to secondary school).
There are many reasons why families cannot find this money (orphans living with relatives, number of siblings, health problems etc). Yet we know there is amazing untapped talent in the villages.
Our quest is to adopt some schools in both Eastern and Western Uganda and invest in some of these children.
Health Clinic
When they are ill, many folk living in the villages find it impossible to walk to the nearest hospital (which may be 10’s of kilometres distant). The answer is to find a well equipped clinic in a local village. These are very scarce! So we are helping a lovely lady called Yema to develop her clinic in a village near Kigumba in western Uganda. Currently people just knock at her door. The picture above shows the beginnings of a proper clinic room. Please read her story below and join us in bringing spiritual and physical healing to the local communities around.
Gifts
We all like receiving gifts, especially if they support a basic need. An example might be preparing food. For many folk they can only afford a little bag of charcoal each week for a cooking fire. So imagine when given the cooking equipment in the picture above.
Land
For most families and communities in rural Uganda, land is very precious and expensive. This leads to land grabbing by greedy or desperate people especially through disputes. So we have just supported one extended family to create a company limited by guarantee to purchase and manage a piece of land.
They will create a social enterprise and provide some benefits for the community and local primary school.