Support Sky Is The Limit school in Uganda

How can a tailoring workshop help impoverished children?

Sky Is The Limit (SITL) Children’s Centre’s The Chosen Few Tailoring School & Workshop provides skills training and hands-on work experience for older children and graduates of the centre’s primary school. This is particularly helpful for the less academically inclined and those seeking vocational training and apprenticeships.

The workshop recruits about 5 trainees per year for its two-year training course, during which the trainees are taught all they need to know about tailoring, designing, and knitting. Priority is given to SITL’s primary school graduates, especially those who have not achieved the grades needed to progress to high school. Any profits made are then used to buy food and educational materials, etc. for the children’s centre, where around 40 orphans (many living with or affected by HIV/AIDS) and children whose parents are unable to care for them have been taken in and given a new home.

Children like Samuel*, who lost his father when he was 9 months old.

Samuel's story

When Sam's father died, his mother found it very difficult to cope. To help make ends meet, she started frying snacks to sell in the local market. Sam was only a little boy but he had to wake at 2 am every day to assist his Mum to prepare the food, which she would sell from 7 am every morning. This had a huge impact on his education, as by midday he was completely exhausted at and unable to focus on his schoolwork. His mother would get very angry with him, and Sam told us he was so unhappy that he sometimes wished he were dead.

Eventually, Sam and his younger brother were taken to live with Rose Kabasinguzi Mugenyi, the local health worker who founded Sky Is the Limit, at her home near Fort Portal, in Western Uganda. For the first time he felt loved and happy and the two boys began to thrive.

Sam is extremely bright and achieved top marks in his primary school exams, enabling him to enter one of the most prestigious high schools in Kampala, Uganda's capital city. Initially, he was anxious about going to such a school, having come from a very humble background, but he told us that Rose always gave him the confidence he needed to succeed.

Rose understands that supporting a child to trust in her/his own abilities is invaluable, and equally as important as ensuring they have a roof over their heads, clean water to drink, and enough food to eat. While most of us receive such encouragement from our parents and may even take it for granted, Rose well knows that the children like Sam often miss out. To help him, she took pains to weave strong threads of self-belief around him, empowering him to be resilient in the face of his doubts and to realise his full potential, despite his difficult start in life.

Succeeding against the odds

Samuel's story is one about overcoming all the challenges life has thrown him. He is now in his third year at medical school and although it has been a real challenge to afford the books and equipment he needs for his studies, Rose and Sky Is the Limit have continued to support him, just as any family would. Sam says Rose has been a role model for him both in her work as a health visitor and founder of Sky Is the Limit, as well as in the individualised attention she manages to provide to all the children living under her care. Sam aims to become a paediatrician and eventually plans to return to Fort Portal to help look after the children too.

What can I do to help?

Expanding its tailoring workshop will enable our local partner, Sky Is the Limit, to support more youngsters like Samuel. Thanks to your generosity, we are already over quarter of the way to reaching our fundraising target to buy equipment and stock for The Chosen Few. However, we still need to do more to enable this innovative social enterprise to take bulk orders and achieve its long-term aim to grow its business, so that it can generate more profits for SITL to fund school meals, buy educational materials, and become more self-sufficient.

Please help us by spreading the word about our campaign, using the ‘Share’ links to the right of this page, and/or by giving whatever you can afford using the orange ‘Donate Now’ button. Every penny goes a long way in Uganda and all donations – huge or small – are always gratefully received! Thank you!

*Name changed in line with Ecologia Youth Trust's Child Protection Policy.

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Sky Is The Limit Children’s Centre’sThe Chosen Few Tailoring School & Workshop provides employment to graduates of Sky Is The Limit and is part of a long term plan to see the centre become sustainable. The workshop’s profits are ploughed back into Sky Is The Limit Primary School and Noah’s Ark, where around 40 orphans and vulnerable children, many living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, have found a new home. Thanks to the money the workshop generates, Sky Is The Limit has been able to buy essentials for its school meals programme as well as other daily necessities for the children it supports.

Sarah is one such child. 13 years old, and the eldest of five children, she and her family sought refuge at Sky Is The Limit after being forced to flee from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo to escape intercommunal violence.

When they arrived at Sky Is The Limit, its founder and Director, Rose Mugenyi, employed Sarah’s father as a night watchman, to enable him to support his family. The children were enrolled at Sky Is The Limit’s school and Sarah’s father worked hard to ensure that all the children could attend, while her mother took care of the house and her youngest sister, who is just 3 years old.

Sadly, last autumn, as Sarah was preparing to sit her Primary Leaving Examinations, her father passed away unexpectedly. With no job, Sarah’s mother was left grieving and desperately wondering how to provide for her children. Urgently needing to find help for the family, Rose wrote to Ecologia:

The big problem the mother is faced with is where to live and take care of her children. She cannot go back to Congo because of the war and she has no money to buy a piece of land to dig and plant food for the family or to provide for their basic needs. The family is facing a very stressful situation and of all of us, as human beings, are sharing it, as we have failed to help them.

Sarah and her siblings became dependent on the single daily meal that Sky's school provides, thanks to funding secured by Ecologia Youth Trust and profits made by the tailoring workshop. But it seemed that Sarah would soon  have to drop out of school, for although primary schooling is free to all in Uganda, her mother cannot afford the fees required to send her to secondary school.

Luckily, after putting out a call for help through our child sponsorship programme, an Ecologia supporter stepped forward to cover Sarah’s school fees of £450 a year. Now she will be able to complete her schooling and gain the education she needs to have the future she dreams of! Meanwhile, the family have been given shelter on the school compound and Sarah’s siblings are continuing to attend school, where they receive a nutritious, hot, daily meal.

Sarah was delighted to receive the good news but the family's situation is still precarious. That's why, with your help, we want to do more to make sure Sarah's brothers and sisters get their basic needs met, and eventually find sponsors of their own. Can you help?

Thanks to your generosity, the tailoring workshop has already been able to buy new sewing machines, and with additional funds it could buy enough stock to enable it to fulfil bulk orders. This in turn will enable it to generate more profits for Sky Is The Limit and the children it supports. 

In Uganda, every penny goes a long way. Please consider donating whatever you can afford to help Sky Is The Limit become more sustainable and give more children like Sarah a fresh start and hope for a bright future.

Links:

• A visit to Sky Is The Limit - an Ecologia supporter reports
• More about Sky Is The Limit
• How does Sky Is The Limit help?