Project Report
| Apr 23, 2013
Great Strides to be Made in the Near Future
By Stephen Cormier | Project Liason
Thank YOU!
We are incredibly honored and excited by the wonderful support GlobalGiving has helped us gain! With the funds we have been able to obtain thus far we are certain this coming school year will be the most expansive project yet-- and certainly will be the most expansive child sponsor project in the Boyo Division, maybe even the entire Northwest Region of Cameroon. So, firstly-- thank you!
The Future
As we begin gearing up for the execution of this project come summer time we have been drafting many plans on how to best approach it, logistically. We believe our extra effort in planning will make distributing support not only more effective (thus saving money) but generally less stressful and easier.
Before we can definitely select which children will be sponsored for a second consecutive year we must first see all of the report cards for our participants—this way we will know who has passed and who has failed (thus being dropped from the project). We anticipate having the ability to sponsor more children than last year—so how will we handle this? We are lucky to have 6 short-term volunteers working with us in Fundong over the summer. So, should we need to conduct in-field interviews of prospective students, we will have the person power!
Last exciting bit of news! We have received a terrific amount of support from Shared World Visions—a Seattle based NGO. We are incredibly thankful for their support and are eager to combine it with the support we have received from GlobalGiving and truly expand this project!
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Jan 22, 2013
A Pleasent Follow-Up Meeting with the Children
By Stephen Cormier | US Peace Corps Volunteer working with BFF
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Just before the close of 2012 BFF hosted a meeting inviting all of the children involved in our first cohort of sponsored children. Almost all of the participants in the group came; while all 18 students were invited we were expecting 17 to come to the meeting—one student lives on the other side of the Northwest Region in Kumbo, thus making his trip too long to come. The meeting ended with 12 students present—though the turnout was not 100%, we learned many lessons on how we can more effectively communicate with children/families living in some of the smaller and more rural villages. We most certainly will apply these new means of communication in the future!
The meeting itself went very well. It had three focuses, we wanted to first, refresh the participants of what is expected of them as members of our project, second, see how the students were progressing, and third see if they had any issues or concerned which we may help mitigate.
We are ecstatic to announce that two of the primary school children ranked first in their class; while many others were amidst the top 10! Only one of the students showed quarterly marks that were not outstanding—we took a moment to address this issue with the student and are hopeful he will make the necessary changes in order to improve.
After the meeting the BFF staff discussed ways in which we may continue growing the project and improving on our implementation in order to be find the most effective means to channel your support!
Be sure to read our 2012 Annual Report! Best wishes in 2013!
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Nov 7, 2012
Great Progress ! 18 Students given support !
By Stephen Cormier | Public Health Coordinator-- Peace Corps Volunteer
We're Excited!!! Why?...
We are so incredibly excited to report that Better Family Foundation has sponsored a total of 18 children for the 2012-2013 academic school year!
How it was done....
Better Family Foundation first worked with the delegates of Basic and Secondary education to talk with principals and headmasters to identify the most marginalized children in their school. The response was overwhelming. BFF received over 250 names. At that moment in time we had not a single franc CFA to see the project come to life. We posted it to the wonderful audience of Global Giving and have come so far!
Who was sponsored?...
We sent 11 primary level school children to school under full sponsorship and 7 secondary level students under partial sponsorship. We are very exited about this outcome. While our original goal was 20 student we are satisfied with the 18 seeing this was a pilot project because we anticipated the many in-field difficulties. All of the primary students were fully sponsored-- meaning we provided them with tuition fees, one uniform and the necessary textbooks. The children were ecstatic. One of the primary children was lucky to have a 'direct sponsor'-- this is where our donors indicate who they would like to sponsor directly. This enabled Marbel to receive a few bonus items seeing she was allocted more money by this specific donor. We were even able to save money for the following school year to be sure she will enroll.
As for the secondary students-- we gave 7 students tuition fees. Tuition fees for secondary school is 10 times that of primary. This is why we were only able to provide the limited assistance-- at the time of disbursement the funds were not yet there. So, we decided it is better to sponsor who we can and begin saving funds for the following year. This is exactly what we've done--and now we're well on our way to securing funding for many more smiling children.
Unfortunately, our internet has been too slow to upload photos--but we were in the city recently and were able upload some to our webpage: http://bffoundation.webs.com/apps/photos/
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