By By Caellagh Morrissey | Project and M&E Manager
With the start of another new year, the S.O.U.L. team is so excited to see our new Iganga office also taking on new territory! This month we will be accepting 21 additional students into our Student Sponsorship Program, bringing relief to parents by partnering to provide 50% of students’ school fees and pairing them with sponsors with whom they regularly communicate. Students went through a rigorous application process including review of school and family history and an interview with both parents and students. Congratulations to those students who made it through! If you are interested in creating a connection with one of our students and sponsoring them to achieve their education or know someone who may be, please visit www.souluganda.org/sponsorship/.
Two of the Iganga Chicken Groups have just successfully completed their first chicken rearing cycle. In addition to learning the ins and outs of how to raise chickens, the women have been learning how to search for a market – from a neighbor to a local restaurant – and practice business finance through practical experience. We hope to start our final group in the coming months as they make the finishing touches to their brooders.
In the next few months we will be beginning a new Goat Group in a nearby village! Our previous group’s goats have been giving birth to kids, which the women give back to the program for continued distribution as part of S.O.U.L.’s Give a Goat – Get a Goat Program. We are scouting possible locations, and will very soon be starting our goat rearing trainings as well as the construction of the brooder where the goats will be kept.
After months of community requests, we have also begun planning for a Pre-Primary/Nursery School for local children ages 3-5. Parents ask for pre-primary schools to prepare their children for success in their formal education. In addition to allowing students to spend their mornings productively, a Pre-Primary/Nursery school will give community mothers the opportunity for a safe childcare environment and time to complete household chores and farming. This exciting new program is something that the community members have requested for months, and after fully immersing ourselves for the past four months, the S.O.U.L. team is ready to take action! Members of the community have already provided 16,000 bricks to support the project.
Finally, we will soon be completing the wiring installation for our Solar Powered Computer Lab! The lab will allow local students and adults to access technology that would otherwise be unavailable to them. The Lab will be located inside of the S.O.U.L. Community Center that the generous support from GlobalGiving donors has allowed us to build. Thank you so much to all of the people who have helped us to make these Iganga programs possible!
Links:
By Basit Ibanda & Caellagh Morrissey | Iganga Field Coordinator & Iganga Project Manager
By Brooke Stern | Co-Founder and CEO
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