Provide Education Opportunity for Fifteen Children

Greetings from the Ngoma Aid Foundation team. Happy to let our friends, well wisherss and donors know that the project is progressing as planned. Since the last report came through, a lot of positive things have transpired like i will be sharing in this report. 

The children had a peaceful and happy second term holiday. They are now at school for the third swchool term and will be home for their December holidays in a month or so. This is a promotional term and Natsaha will be seating for her Primary Leaving Examinations. Despite the all the challenges and mistakes we have made in the past, the good news is that the school fees (main expense alongside day to day maintanence of the home) are fully settled for all the children. Our food store might be lacking some item for the next two months to the close of the year but our other bills such as water and electricity are up to date. This leaves every one happy and a little relieved and thankful that we are able to move forward. 

In the past, we tried to increase our scope as a Foundation and started several projects without alternative sources of funding. Whereas, the Global Giving Foundation offers a wonderful platform for online fundraising, it takes alot more than being on the platform and there is thus need for hard and smart work, a wide network of donors and friends and generally a message that donors can identify with to ensure constant fundraising and support. The organsiation thought that by spreading so thin with a number of projects on the platform, we would be able to help alot more people in the community and generally grow. 

We did put in some effort to fundraise and as things turned out, funding for the new projects became a big challenge. And we still had to make reports until it was apparent that there was basically nothing to report about. We resolved to make a  "U" turn on some of the things that had led us to this unpleasant situation. We have since learnt our lesson and have benefitted from the experience. There is not much money or funding at the moment but we also appreciate that we do not need much money to operate since we scaled down our scope. We are lucky that we are one of those Non Profits that can operate on less than $15,000 a year and still create positive impact on the project progress. Whereas we might not be very effective, we are still accomplishing our targets. We have also learnt that fundraising is a full time job and should be done consistently. Most important, we also acknowledge that educating ourselves about fundraising using the many available fundraising tools and educating our donors, friends and well wishers about what our organisation is doing and the impact it is creating is very crucial. 

As a result of this experience, we as a team have become creative and sought other means/ ways to ensure project progreseseven when we do not raise much from the platform. We have learnt to prioritise and get value for money. It is amazing that we are already thinking of 1st term 2017 school fees notw that this term is cleared, at this time of the year bearing in mind of the fact that we still have two months to take care of. The team is more committed than ever before to make this project succeed and we can only do it with your help. We have made mistakes in the past, and have since moved on and learnt signisificantly from our mistakes. 

Wishing you a happy festive season - 2016