Greetings from Uganda Hands for Hope!
We hope this message finds our supporters and sponsors around the world well. We've had a busy couple months!
Thanks to funding from The Irish Society in Uganda we received the first shipment of new physical therapy equipment for our special needs children: a bobath ball, a therapy roller and the walkers were instantly put to use! The grant also allowed us to purchase a motorbike to enable some of our special needs children with mobility issues to get to school everyday. We are so grateful!
Children from the Acacia International School have been coming to our school weekly to teach our students how to use computers. We are very grateful that the Acacia students volunteered to help our children in this way, thank you! If you know someone who might be interested in volunteering with us, please reach out. Volunteers are always welcome, whether you are a gap year student, retired, or a professional who wants to make a difference on a volunteering holiday!
Our partners at CRANE (Children at Risk Action Network) provided the children with a great training about environmental awareness. They learned about conservation and helped to plant some avocado and mango seeds that they will take care of themselves!
As always, we are hoping to enroll more children into our school so please reach out to us if you, or someone you know, might be interested in sponsoring a child - you can make a real difference!
With gratitude,
The Uganda Hands for Hope Team
Links:
Greetings from Uganda!
First of all, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated during the Little by Little campaign last month! We managed to raise almost $4500, thanks to your generosity and the matching funds awarded by GlobalGiving. An amazing result! We were also able to inspire 5 new sponsors to support 5 more vulnerable children in our program! Please reach out if you're interested in learning how you can help.
And a BIG thank you to our volunteers who have finally started coming more consistently to assist from abroad - they always have a wonderful time and have a massive impact on the children of Hands for Hope. We also have a wonderful new volunteer who has started to teach STEM classes to our children online every week! This is in addition to the wonderful students at AVS Academy who teach our children online every Saturday morning!
If you are interested in learning more about volunteering with us, please email handsforhopeuganda@gmail.com.
And some more good news... two of the our girls from the primary school received 1st division grades and were awarded scholarships to attend one of the top schools in Uganda thanks to our partnership with HATUA!
And now a bit of difficult news... one of our youngest children has sadly been diagnosed with blood cancer. Hands for Hope is currently providing support by ensuring she receives treatment, food support, transport and whatever else we can do. We are keeping her in our thoughts and will keep you updated.
As always, thanks for your ongoing support!
Until next time,
The Uganda Hands for Hope Team
Links:
Greetings from Uganda!
Thanks to your generous donations on Giving Tuesday last November, our children are learning from and interacting with students from around the world on the new Smart TVs we've installed in some of the classrooms! Having more exposure to the internet (and the rest of the world!) will certainly improve their quality of education. Not to mention the fun they've been having learning Irish dancing online! (See photo below)
We're also excited to report that we've been able to start welcoming volunteers at our site again after a long break due to COVID. Mika and Yoko from Japan helped our children with tailoring lessons and Luana from Belgium was assisting the social workers and teachers. Please get in touch if you have any interest in volunteering with us here!
We've always helped our children and their families with medical issues in the past and we are pleased to report that thanks to our intervention and follow up, one of our children was finally properly diagnosed with blood cancer and is now getting the necessary treatment she needs and is improving. If it wasn't for your support, we would never have been able to help her - so thank you!
Unfortunately though, rising prices and inflation have made it difficult to make our budget work this year. We've had to cut back on some extra curriculars like some sports/dance activities and school trips just to make sure we can keep our basic services going. So, to hopefully help fill in the gaps, we will be participating in GlobalGiving's Little by Little Campaign in April - stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks!
As always, thanks for your continued support!
The Uganda Hands for Hope Team
Links:
Hello everyone!
THANK YOU to everyone who donated on Giving Tuesday! Thanks to your generosity, we were able to raise over $20,000 in just 24 hours and received $5,581 from GlobalGiving in bonus funds!
As mentioned before, we plan to use some of the money raised to purchase SmartTVs to allow our students to readily access the internet and connect with students from around the world through virtual classrooms but we also received a very generous amount from a single donor that will be used to purchase a much-needed van for the schools. Transport has always been an issue for us and a van will help us to take children to medical appointments, boarding facilities we partner with, educational field trips and of course will help with logistical trips like monthly shopping and visiting families in need - particularly those with children with special needs.
We've also been working on some other initiatives lately:
Due to the challenges our children go through and the need for a professional counsellor, we were pleased to welcome a volunteer professional counsellor who provided regular support to the children.
A daily book hour has been introduced when all the students and staff, both teaching and non-teaching, read books and share the book experiences at the end of each week. This is to help develop and promote a reading culture at the high school, develop the students’ vocabulary, confidence and comprehension.
Acacia school students have been coming on campus weekly for student interaction and have been teaching UHfH’s students the basics of how to use a computer.
HATUA continues to provide fully funded scholarships for students that score top grades in their Primary level leaving
certificates. There are currently three students from Uganda Hands for Hope who go to two of the top schools in
Uganda!
We will certainly keep everyone posted as things develop in Uganda over the next couple months!
Thanks again, and Happy Holidays!
The Uganda Hands for Hope Team
Links:
Greetings from Uganda!
We hope this project report finds all of our supporters doing well!
The last couple months have been very busy at Hands for Hope. Our primary school now has close to 200 students and our new secondary school is thriving with 60 students. We are so proud of how well all the children are doing!
As the term came to a close last month, our secondary school students put on a great talent show - the new marching band (thank you Brass for Africa!) performed, and we had cultural dancing, story telling, beatboxing, boxing and more! It was wonderful to see the kids be able to put their difficult home lives out of their minds for a few hours and really support each other in their talents!
We've also launched a new children's parliament initiative that not only allows the students to voice their concerns and discuss issues they might be having (at home, in the community or at school) in a safe environment but it also allows them to learn how to debate amongst themselves!
In other wonderful news, thanks to donations raised by a volunteer, we were able to purchase a custom-made wheelchair for a young girl with cerebral palsy who had been unable to join HfH's special needs program because her mother was unable to carry her to the school every day. Thanks to HfH, the girl is now able to have a safe place to spend her days while her mother runs a small business that HfH helped her start!
And finally, a big thank you to one of our long-time supporters who has started a fundraising page to buy three Smart TVs - one for each of the nursery classrooms to enable the children to engage in online Jolly Phonics songs, games and videos as well as other online educational programs.
Wishing you all the best around the world. And as always, thank you for your continued support!
The Uganda Hands for Hope Team
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
Make a monthly donation & get 
