HUGS Update December 2024. Disability is not Inability

 Disability is not Inability

HUGS supporters are changing the lives of disabled children in Uganda.  The last time we visited St Francis de Sales Special Needs School we saw blind children playing football, deaf children dancing and one particularly tenacious boy, aged 8, who has never been able to stand on his deformed legs, gleefully challenge the other children to a running race.  It’s a joy to see. At Good Shepherd School, the first HUGS school for differently abled children, the kids gossip and chatter in sign language.  The laughter is all the louder.

The magic ingredient to make all of this happen is self-belief.  Attending Good Shepherd and St Francis de Sales Schools are 200 children who are told every day that they are important and respected. They respond by behaving with respect to others and by developing a deep sense of their own value.  This is no easy feat and is hard won against prevailing negative social attitudes.

Just by existing, both schools, challenge restrictive cultural norms. For many in Uganda, a child with disability is shameful; something to hide away.  Many children will never leave their homes, for fear of being seen, and the idea of an education is so unrealistic, it doesn’t form part of their dreams.  It is a waste of immense talent.  On top of this, many of Uganda’s poorest families have children with disability, and what small amounts of money they have, will rarely be invested in that child’s education.

As Uganda moves, with the rest of the world, to using assistive technologies; walking aids, wheelchairs, computers and hearing aids, there are going to be countless new opportunities for differently abled people, never previously conceived.  The children at St Francis de Sales and Good Shepherd school, are going to be well placed to take advantage of them. 

HUGS needs your continued support. It takes teachers with advanced skills, smaller classrooms and more equipment up-skill a child with disabilities. HUGS supports the education of many children with disability thought our sponsorship scheme, because parents can simply not afford the higher school fees. We find it is well worth the investment. 

Take Brenda, who we have sponsored since primary school, who became an official National Ambassador of Deaf Ugandans, after winning Miss Deaf Uganda.  HUGS donors continue to pay her tuition fees to become a Special Needs Signing Teacher.  Yudera, who has been blind since birth, has completed her degree in Social Work, thanks to our donors, and now helps to uphold human rights in her work.

Both St Francis de Sales and Good Shepherd Schools have children who need a helping hand with their fees, to start the new academic year in February.  A year at primary School costs £250.  If you would like to sponsor a child, please email us hugs.chair@gmail.com.  And to quote the moto of St Francis de Sales School ‘Disability is not inability’. 

A Frenzy of Activity

A frenzy of Activity

Just South of Busunjju, something special is happening.  A team of construction workers and staff from CEFOVID (an NGO working in a Kampala Slum) are getting ready for the opening of a new school.  Thanks to the generosity of our HUGS donors, especially the Mulchand Foundation, this school is going to raise the life chances of 300 children each year, who would otherwise face years of poverty, hunger, disease and violence in the slum. 

 

This is the school now.  It is the largest in the local area, and has attached so much positive attention. It is ready for a lick of paint, inside and outside. The classrooms are large and cool, the kitchen (seen below) comes with a dining room, where the children will be able to super-power their brains and grow their bodies with locally sourced nutritious food. 

There is a frenzy of activity, to get the school ready for the big opening in February.  The land has been planted with cassava, beans and maize, Because of the superb planning of the local teams, the first harvest will be in January. Just ready to fill the kitchen storage ready for the new intake of hungry children.  The fields were initially ploughed by tractor, and then cleared and planted by hand. Cassava plants are already standing a foot tall and the maize is flowering.

  

A part of the preparation work is to make a home for the teachers. HUGS had been able to fund the construction of flats for them.  Now they will not have to travel long distances to get to the school, and will be able to participate in the social life and sporting teams at the school.  Children learn better, when they are around literate, educated adults, something which is unfortunately in short supply in the slum. 

The children are excited that they will have dedicated sports facilities.  We have funded the construction of a new sports pitch, which is safe (it is free of rubbish and dung) and flat.  Many children will only have seen these sorts of facilities on the TV, never in real life.  Let's not forget the importance of sanitation. We were lucky to have found a safe underground water supply from a borehole-well. The latrines are being dug at the moment, by hand (see picture below).

The most important preparatory work is talking to the children's families. The children will be resident at the school, during term time, and it is essential parents have the trust that their children will be looked after.  CEFOVID has been holding regular question and answer sessions with the families of prospective students. They know that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, to help educate their children, so they have the skills and confidence to leave the life of the slum behind.  They are so grateful to each and every one of our supporters for helping make this happen. 

Small Beginnings. Never Give Up.

From small beginnings grows great change. One of the wonderful parts of being involved in a charity that helps children to learn is being able to share the stories of amazing people and how they have used their education to create a better life for themselves and their communities.

Recently Ronald, from the Slum Education Project (CEFOVID), shared photos of the women who we sponsored to gain a qualification in tailoring.  A year after gaining, not only a certificate of competence, but also a renewed sense of self-worth and pride, all are now running new businesses. As most of the women are single parents, their new incomes empower them to take charge of their own lives.  The extra cash they create is spent mainly on… you guessed it.. sending their children to school.

We have looked back through our records and found other HUGS students who have made the most of the generous gift of education which the HUGS Donors have given then.

Michael and Ronald came to our attention when they were studying their O levels. They were both bright ‘top of the class’ students, driven through their own personal tragedies, to work in health care.  We supported them through University.  Michael is a junior doctor who has just started his first job working in a community hospital.  Ronald has his own Optician business, specialising in paediatric care, and offers his skills for free to our special needs school, St Francis de Sales, to diagnose and treat the children’s eye conditions.

These students knew where they were going.  Two students who had less of a direction are Danny and Doreen.  HUGS helped pay for Danny’s education right from primary school. He attended St Zoe’s, the first HUGS built school.  He is a designer for construction companies, but his heart lies in making and producing music.  Look him up on Youtube under the name Danny Nats https://youtu.be/A4LPeJiP1ds?si=jKdD4S9Lnw-5poBo

Doreen has just started her own Media and Branding business, an important growth industry in a developing country.  This week, a HUGS donor supported her with a small grant to purchase her first colour printer. We wish her all the best.

One of the first students, HUGS ever sponsored, was Peter. Aged just 6 he was orphaned by the AIDS crisis in Uganda and his extended family helped him stay in school, by asking HUGS to help.  We lost touch with him until last year when, though networks and mutual friends, he tracked the HUGS Trustees down during our last visit in February and joined us for dinner.  He is now an ordained Catholic Priest, a keen community worker and embedded in a poor community. He is giving back so much.

One of Peter’s school friends was Patrick.  When Patrick was aged 12 he started school for the first time. Initially, in a class of 5-6 year olds he was generous, kind and learned quickly.  Now he runs a successful farming business producing honey and eggs. He offers help and support to HUGS Schools on how to use their land productively to maximise profit to improve the education of children, who like him, would never have had opportunity if it wasn’t for the support of others.

All of these activities are only possible because of the generous contributions of the HUGS donors. Thank you for supporting our new students. What will these children achieve in the future with your help? Isn’t the young boy’s tee-shirt appropriate? Never give up. 

Sustainable SCHOOLS

HUGS has drawn up a long shopping list to kit out the New Hope School, which will open its doors in February and care for 300 children from the KosOvo Kampala slum. The children will need books, pencils, pens and paper of course; school uniforms, shoes and a sports kit.  Teaching equipment; a blackboard, chalk, desks and chairs. Then there are items to help maintain health; soap, cleaning fluids, mosquito nets and cooking utensils, pots and bowls.  And don’t forget the need for beds, mattresses and a place to store belongings.  Over a year 300 children will eat 150,000 meals. Schools are resource hungry. They become a place where local businesses provide services and trade. We observe how local farmers alter their crops and micro-industries are created.  

Ugandans are acutely aware of how much they rely on their natural environment.  80% of the population are farmers, and with a growing population, now topping 50 million, living on a land mass of 250,000 sq km (the same as the UK) a growing challenge is how to make development sustainable. 

We see this being played out in our schools.  With wise and intelligent leadership, all of our schools own land and use it to provide goods. They grow a variety of crops in ways which value diversity. They collect rainwater, generate solar electricity and use high efficient stoves for cooking and move as far to self-sustainability as possible. HUGS encourages and funds these initiatives.  We have also sponsored gifted students to study Agriculture and Public health at University. 

These activities work because of education.  Ugandans are acutely aware of climate change and can observe how ‘developed countries’ have worked the land too hard destroying nature’s ability to regenerate. The children at Good Shepherd School, Little Shepherd School and Asili Girls School learn sustainable farming techniques. They help plant, harvest and store crops and feed livestock and breed fish.  The New Hope School has 9 acres of farmland and intends to copy these initiatives so much of their ongoing ‘shopping list’ is provided in a locally sustainable way, safeguarding their future. 

We will tell you more about the New Hope Farm project over the next few years.  If you’d like to be involved, we are looking for interested partners. Please contact us at hugs.chair@gmail.com

A Good Nights Sleep in Uganda

How important is a good nights sleep for learning? According to research from all over the world, sleep increases a child’s ability to create short term memory and more importantly move it into permanent storage. Sleep boosts creative thinking and improves problem solving.

Therefore it is no surprise that HUGS has used donor funds to build dormitories, purchase beds, mattresses and importantly mosquito nets. In Uganda, a school with a dormitory means children don’t have to to walk long distances and arrive tired and girls can avoid being hassled or worse assaulted whilst they innocently make their way to receive an education.

Above is a photo of the dormitory at Little Shepherd School, Rutunguru.  It was constructed particularly for girls, allowing 120 to sleep in peace. It has solar lighting, so that students can read into the evening. Since it opened 4 years ago, academic performance at the school has improved.  It's been a day for 'spring cleaning' and washed mattresses and bedding are drying in the sun.

This is the largest dormitory which HUGS has funded at the Asili Girls school, Lira. Here, 200 secondary students can sleep safely. They have communal washrooms, laundry and bathrooms making a self contained living community. The head, Sr Veronika is so proud of the girls focus on education as they enter the school, and know that these facilities help them avoid external distractions and hardships.

And here is St Francis de Sales, where our latest dormitory has been built. It is designed with wheelchair users in mind and has a sick bay. This building is ‘home’ to 40 children with special educational needs. Recently HUGS supporters have bought new beds, mattresses, and mosquito nets, as most of the children come from families too poor to provide them with these essentials. 



These are the foundations for a second dormitory at Dokolo Girls School. Currently 50 girl students sleep on the floor of a classroom. They have poor access to water, washing facilities and privacy. To complete this building is one of the HUGS priorities for this year (at a cost of £13,000).  We are looking for a corporate sponsor to help us realise the school dreams of having a bed for every one of their students. Can you help?


A school in Uganda is a place of safety. A place where teachers and staff are responsible not only for the education of children, but also their nutrition, their health and their well-being. A good night sleep is an essential ingredient to this welfare. Thank you to all our supporters who have helped tuck these young people into a warm, clean and safe bed

Sharing the Joy

The HUGS Trustees trip to Uganda last month has filled us with joy and hope.  We are reminded of the dedication and personal sacrifice of our Trusted representatives and marvel at the tenacity of the organisations they work for, which we support.  We met with so many children who, with a little help from our donors, are surmounting great obstacles in life to learn, grow and have fun.

We’d like to share four highlights of our trip with you in the form of short videos.

The first shows the progress of the New Hope School, which will care for 300 children from the Kosovo Slum, Kampala. When you watch it, remember that most children have never been to the countryside and don’t have space to play.  The building work is going to plan, on time, and within budget.

During our visit, we presented a new football kit to the Girls football team at Dokolo School. Two years ago, the girls won the regional football championships playing barefoot in their school uniforms.  There’s nothing holding them back now so be prepared for more trophies.  The dances they perform are traditional Ugandan and celebrate the strength of woman. Very apt.

We met with 4 University students HUGS has sponsored who graduated in 2023/4. This video shows a short interview with Rita Kenyange, (MSc in Immunology and Clinical Microbiology), Tom Okade (Degree in Environmental Science and Public Health) and two newly qualified doctors, Michael Ssuuna and Paul Nsobani. All destined to become great leaders in their chosen fields. 

Finally, no one is excluded. We never cease to be amazed by the compassionate and inclusive thinking which makes St Francis de Sales such an inspirational school.  Every child has a disability and receives a bespoke, caring education from teachers, who themselves have overcome disabilities to become examples of what ca be achieved when people believe in your potential. 

Thank you for all your support.  None of this would be possible without your trust in our charity.  We hope you can share in the joy we have experienced first-hand.  We visit our projects every 18 months and are happy to take donors with us. 

Richard Bircher

HUGS Chair.    

First Hand

Tomorrow I will arrive in Kampala, to prepare for the HUGS Trustees trip to visit our schools and projects.  These trips are an essential part of the work of HUGS as they provide us with confidence that projects are being completed with honesty and care.  We can in turn give  first hand feedback to you, our donors.  Invariably we see the commitment and personal sacrifice made by our partners in Uganda.  Our school leaders, administrators, teachers, and development workers use the resources you donate, to make long lasting, positive change in the lives of so many children.  They make magic happen.

I am reminded that everything substantial we do, is made up of tiny victories.  Every wall starts with a brick, every well starts with a hole and every child who we sponsor has a first day in at school.  Here is Vivian, who in 2018 was identified as a child in need by Sister Noeline. She has this week completed her primary education with top marks in every subject and is looking for a sponsor to help her continue to learn in secondary school.  Primary school ‘top marks’ was an impossible objective before help was offered. Her single mother was too poor to afford a uniform and illness stopped her attending state school most days.

I found a letter from Vivian. Even at aged 8 she was motivated. ‘How are you? Here I am fine. My name is Nabbaale Vivian.  Live in Wakiso.I am in primary three I am promoted to Primary four. When I grow up in future, I will be a nun… I wish you a nice day, may god bless you Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.’

On this trip we will visit the New Hope School, where construction is ongoing with pace.  We will see the beautiful St Francis de Sales Special Needs School, with its new intake of 100 children, who would never have been able to attend school without the Director, Sebastian’s support.  We will also visit our two Girls secondary Schools, Asili and Dokolo, both in areas where less than 1:10 girls benefit from a secondary education.  These girls are the elite in both academic abilities and personal motivation.

We will update you as our trip unfolds.  Thank you for having faith and trust in the work of HUGS. If any donor would like any specific reassurances or would like to know anything about our projects please email us on hugs.chair@gmail.com

Thank you for your continued support.

Richard Bircher