07/03/2026
Some snaps from our final week in Tiira Village, Busia, Uganda. We visited all of our sponsored families to work out their most pressing needs. Matresses and beds were needed for some of the parents. Imagine being in your late 60s or early 70s and lying down on practically a bare floor at night and even worse having to be able to lift your self up in the morning before setting off to do 4 hours of back-breaking work digging in the fields. Others were hungry with no food in the house and we gave them a 50kg bag of flour. These first couple of months of the new year can be difficult because of scarcity of work and lack of crops to harvest. We even paid out small amounts of money on a one-year contract basis so that our families, with fathers present, could cultivate with crops for two growing seasons and help them to be food safe for a year. Others needed school fees for children we had dropped as part of our phasing out process. We reversed our decision and reinstated Primary 4 and Primary 5 students for the next two years. We were happy to this as everyone now knows that we will be finished in Dec 2027. They opted for school fees ahead of flour or mattresses, so great is their realisation that education is something that will stand to their children in their future lives. We are a victim of our own success. Many students have achieved their O-levels after 4 years in secondary school, that previously would not have been able to afford secondary school. They now want to go on two year Certificate courses in, for example, Early childhood education teaching, nurse training, engineering courses, and University for two students who achieved their A-levels. These are in addition to the many we have previously sponsored in Vocational skills training in a Polytechnic. As you will understand some children are more academically able than others. We have agreed to sponsor some of these students who got exceptional results so that they will be beacons of hope for other extremely poor families in the village. They will show that even the poorest of the poor can aspire to a brighter future in life. These courses are expensive and so we have made heavy financial commitments that hopefully will be covered by public donations and if not will be paid for by the Charity’s Trustees. We agreed to repair the leaking roofs in some homes, paid for several to get medical conditions treated for parents as well as children, otherwise they would remain untreated and would have detrimental effects for the future. These included two children that suffer from epilepsy, a parent who was in danger of loosing sight in one of her eyes, with several others having malaria, or maleria accompanied by typhoid that needed to be treated. A little money goes a long way in Tiira, but providing food for their family is the biggest struggle after education fees, which thankfully with your help we have been able to provide. We thank all of our donors for what they have enabled us to accomplish for this impoverished community. Our biggest educational priority on this trip was to provide over 2000 new Ugandan English Readers in class packs which will be used over and over again by all of the children in the schools we have used for the past 10 years. You can look forward to a newsletter with greater detail in around 4 weeks time. Thank you for your encouragement and your support.
