By Alison Hall | Founder of Seeds for Development
Sally is a very special girl with a very exciting future! She is six years old and one of 8 children. She was a student at our nursery school in Putuke, where we pay for the teachers and provide porridge for the children. The porridge gave her energy and that energy made her stand out as an exceptional little girl. We have now found a sponsor, who is paying for Sally to go to an excellent boarding school in the south of Uganda. At first I found it hard to accept that it is better for these young children to be taken away from their families at such a young age, but it is almost impossible for the parents to care properly for so many children when they have nothing.
Without our porridge, the 750 children might not eat anything hot all day. Yes, you read that right - the number of children receiving our porridge has increased from 670 to 750! The reason for this is because more and more families are sending their children to our nursery schools, where they know they will receive a cup of hot porridge every day!
When things get tough - all it takes if for somoene to fall sick and have to go to hospital to totally bankrupt a family - they have to resort to going into the bush and picking grass and leaves. The photo with the greens, is all that one family will eat. I saw this during my trip to Uganda last month and it is very sad.
It was the school holidays during my trip and so I went to visit the children at their homes. You can see in the pictures how very primitive it is. Everything happens in this hut and Sally sleeps behind the curtain with her brothers and sisters.
Very encouraging news from my trip was that parents are now really seeing the benefits of their children attending school and some are able to contribute to the cost of porridge, either by bringing in the maize to make it or with a financial contribution. This goes some way to taking the strain off us, with the ever increasing number of children. Your donation has made such a big difference and we are so grateful to you for your support. It costs 8p for a cup of porridge and £15 for porridge for one child for a year. This doesn't sound too much, until you multiply it by 750!
I could also see the positive change, with the children looking cleaner and healthier than I have ever seen them.
Our next trip is planned for November, when we will attend the graduation ceremonies of some of the nursery schools. I love seeing them all dressed up as if they are graduating from university!
Thank you again for your support and I hope that you found this update interesting! Please do get in touch if you would like to know anything about our Porridge Project or any of the other projects that we are running.
With my best wishes
Alison
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