Support 1000 young mothers with beehives in Uganda

Dear partners,

With much appreciation from Budongo Women Bee Enterprise (BUWOBE), and going through all the different COVID-19 lockdowns and the pandemic diffucult challenges across the world, the good news is that we have the vaccine and slowly we are getting back to normal.

Although nationwide restrictions for COVID-19 do not directly affect bee colonies, the bee keepers where disturbed socially, emotionally and had financial limits that prevented a number of activities to take place. Such activities included regular meetings, movement to locations which greatly affected the monitoring and the supervision of the apiary sites in the community.

We at Safeplan Uganda particularly cherish the BUWOBE project because it was our very first grant, and now it’s a two times award winner: firstly in 2014 with SeedInitiative Africa and secondly in 2018 the Young Women Transform Prize by USAID.

This means that we have to continue monitoring and supervising all activities even when we have no active grants as part of sustainability plan of the project.

During the month of April through May, some members have already started harvesting honey for the first season of 2021. We expect this year’s harvest to be better than last year.

As we continue to recruit and train more members, we expect to reach at least 500 members by the end of 2022 with basic skills on bee keeping. We are harnessing the merger resource we have to share knowledge and skills to ensure the project keep moving until it achieves its goals of “A self-reliant Woman” able to take care of themselves without fully relying on spouse or external support.

We have seen the outcome, other self-help groups from neighboring villages have started showing interest and we are supporting them with few hours of training so as to get them ready for bee keeping.

Kigaju forest camp is a private forest reserve is such community which have requested for our support to train the community to harness the privileges of living near the forest to keep bees while protecting the forest resources. This is expanding the need for our work and bringing value to Safeplan Uganda organization.

We very much continue to appreciate your support both from institutions and individuals, we are able to move because you are part of our initiative.

To learn more about all our activities and achievements please visit our website at Safeplan Uganda.

Yours faithfully,

Birungi Annet

Executive Director

Safeplan Uganda.

Links:

• search for Buwobe

Dear Partner,

We acknowledge and value the continued support given to the rural women of Budongo to strengthen their livelihood income through beekeeping.

Our campaign to Support 1000 Young Mothers with Beehives in Uganda has so far recieved $1,572.8 USD that has enabled us to produce more than 110 hives and distributed to more women.

In our most recent harvest we managed to get additional, 12kg of honey.

We have managed to recruit our own youth we trained as full time staff to produce bee equipment for increase honey production, this was becuase other people were willing to buy we had to increase production.

The project is looking forward to raise more funds to produce and distribute more hives to reach the target of 1000.

Also we look ahead to mobilize more funds to acquire modern packaging materials, honey processing machine to enable us market well packed and quality honey to meet the national and international levels of quality.

We continue to be profoundly impressed by your kind support towards the young mothers of Budongo Women Enterprise.

With gratitude

Safeplan Uganda

Birungi Annet

Executive Director

GlobalGiving Project report April 2020

In September 2019, Safeplan launched a campaign on GlobalGiving to support its project the Budongo Women Bee Enterprises, a total of $1,408 dollars was contributed by generous people from around the world, and up to 75 beehives were produced, each beneficiary now owns 3 bee hives, we continue to say thank you all for your support.

Activities accomplished include;

1. 30 youths qualified as trainer of trainee acquiring certificate of completion courtesy of USAID.
2. 75 beehives boxes shared among thirty beneficiaries each one owns 3 beehives. Watch the 1mins video here
3. 1 pair of beehive suite was bought (2 overall, gum boots, and hand gloves for honey harvest)

The USAID $15,000 prize funds ended on October 31st 2019, Safeplan Uganda organisation has the task to mobilise and fundraise to ensure project sustainability that is why we appreciate your support always because you have extended the project life beyond donor funds.

We are looking forward to mobilising more funds to continue the project to ensure each member owns at least five beehive boxes.

We want to thank you again and ask you to keep watch over our reports for more updates.

With appreciation

Safeplan Uganda

Links:

• Project video utube.com/watch?v=uDlnin5-ZxY
• https://medium.com/usaid-2030/youth-in-uganda-find-a-sweet-solution-b6edd8292ee5
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnFisyxQd9c&feature=youtu.be

In September 2019 Budongo Women Bee Enterprises (BUWOBE) was one of the projects competing in the Global giving accelerator programme an online crowd funding platform, generous people from around the world supported the project with $1,408 which transformed to $1045 after the transfer charges are deducted.
The crowd campaign fund is to support 1000 women with 5 bee hives each in Budongo Sub county Masindi District in Uganda.
To date 50 bee hives have been produced and ready for installation. Thank you, our partners.

Progress to date:

1. The beehives have been produced with very little labor cost thus enabling us to have more boxes.
2. The previous beehives installed are almost ready for harvest and I want to assure you they are doing very well.
3. Bee hives project is the way to go for rural women around the forest reserves and it going to be a lucrative business for rural people in Uganda.

Challenges

1. Timber cost have gone high due to high restriction by the forest authority and heavy rainfall during this season.
2. We have more members who still need hives and require more beehives.

To learn more about the BUWOBE project please visit BUWOBE Page.

To support our project again please visit BUWOBE Project to make your contribution.

Budongo Women Bee Enterprise working around the clock to address the challenges women face especially economically. The project is has empowered with skills now we are supporting with inputs and market linkages. The skills phase has provided a capital asset to the beneficiaries, the input is to generate financial source for individuals keeping bees and market network will crown it all with access to finance services, increased earning and overall good life for individuals and their families with improved livelihood.

Links:

• Buwobe page
• USAID Edulinks Shares BUWOBE stories
• Donate

Dear Partners,

I am writing with much appreciation and joy with updates on your kind support to our recently launched project on Globalgiving website on the project of Budongo Women Bee Enterprises.

Contributions:

We have so far raised 865$ from 17 donors and we are so excited with this generous support out of your kindness. With this funds we shall produce 70 beehives by ourselves. Any additional 25$ is equivalent to 2 beehives.

Project activities.

The project of Budongo Women Bee Enterprises is on going and you can listen to the beneficiaries speak out

As soon as we recieve the disbursmenet we shall start the work immediately and share with you every progress of the activities of beehives production.

One more humbe request--- the accelerator is only 4 days! to end, please if you can make additional 25$ we shall double to 140 beehives produced buy ourselves.

Joyfully

Birungi Annet

Executive Director

SAFEPLAN UGANDA.

Links:

• The beneficiaries speakout