Uganda Lodge Newsletter March 2018

Greetings to all our dear friends and supporters 

After all the snow in the UK and also after celebrating 50 years of marriage to the ever understanding Paul,  I am now back out in Uganda again.

The new school year is well under way and we have registered many new children, making a total of over 550, with 200 of them boarding.

We have used one of the existing classrooms to add space for the boys boarding section so it matches the girls but this has meant that we still have two classes with 70+ pupils in them – not ideal. One other new classroom is partly completed but we cannot use it yet as we are getting quite a lot of rain and it has no doors, windows or plastered walls. See here if you are able to help.

The 10 existing classrooms all looked very fresh and bright – thanks to Ian and his team of volunteers who all spent hours renovating and painting walls and desks etc. The children are all very appreciative of their lovely surroundings.
Some of our last year’s graduates from P7 have gone on to Senior School, but I have heard that others cannot afford even the government senior schools. This is why we are working on encouraging some of them to attend short vocation and business skills training courses. This will hopefully motivate them to look for ways to employ themselves, make some money and keep out of trouble.

We have a new front gate at Uganda Lodge and have widened the entrance bridge over the stream. Its still awaiting some more paintwork. Other improvements are an extra shelter & new storage at the school kitchen and painting and renovation work at the Lodge toilets and bedrooms.  The football field now has metal goalposts as children and termites had done irreparable damage to the old ones.

 

We have a group of 19 Explorer Scouts and their Leaders from Daviot and OldMeldrum in Scotland coming to volunteer with us in July. They are busy fund-raising so we can have a purpose-built hall for Scouting activities plus it can be used for our school and general community use. They have already sent us £4,000 so the foundations are almost completed. As more donations are received we will continue with the build and are hoping that by the time the Scouts arrive it will be well on the way to completion.

    

Many thanks to all who have donated money to this community over the past years. I am sorry that I have been unable to keep up with sending out individual ‘Thank You’ certificates to everybody  like we used to. There is always too much admin for me to do, but if you would still like one please drop me an email and I will send it out to you.
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I spend a lot of time each week promoting Uganda Lodge and our School and Denis’s wonderful safaris, and keep  looking for ways to find new sponsors plus volunteers to go out to Uganda. But please can you help me?
It would be really good if everyone reading this would stop and tell their friends about us. The website is easy to remember www.ugandalodge.com, and  every one that comes out here makes a big difference to many hundreds of disadvantaged children.
Take our Medical Centre for example. We hold regular baby clinics and are able to initially treat all of our 500+ children at our school for free. Throughout the year we facilitate Medical Students to do their Electives and they all say they get far more experience than they would in the UK at a surprisingly low cost

If you have been to Uganda Lodge already, please send me a few positive sentences about your experiences to put on our websites, or perhaps a  link to mini videos of some of your photos. Word of mouth is always the best kind of advertising.

Small is good… if you join EASY FUNDRAISING  through this special link we will get an extra £4 at no cost to yourself., and every time you purchase something online – our charity gets a small commission
Or if you sign up with YOUR SCHOOL LOTTERY you would like to have the chance of winning £25,000 each week for just One Pound take a look at this link and JOIN IN
Thanks to those already participating and especially to the people who have already won small amounts and have donated it back to us while waiting for the BIG WIN

From Ann McCarthy (+44 7867998414)
       and Denis Aheirwe (+256 701536197)