Goshen Nursery & Primary School, Uganda

Goshen Children's Centre is situated at Bulumbi Trading Centre in Busia District on the eastern side of Uganda. This is an orphanage of 80 children to date, 6 foster mothers and 8 other staff members. The children are between 3 and 15 years of age.

The Centre is a non-governmental Christian based organization, which was established in 2017 by the late Miss Dianah Nabwire, and Samuel Hephzibah, and a group of five volunteers that were concerned about the mushrooming number of orphaned children.

As rebel insurgency was becoming more and more rampant, especially in northern and parts of eastern Uganda, many children were left without parents and others abducted by the rebels. Children witnessed their parents being killed.

In addition to rebel insurgency, HIV/AIDS has claimed many parents' lives in various parts of the country, leaving their children without any care. These children become traumatized in all ways if left unattended to. They need a lot of support through sensitization, education, counselling, pastoral care, health care and also socio-economic support. There are many more children we cannot take on because of financial constraints.

These and many others are the reasons as to why we were concerned and came up with a helping hand to reach out to such disadvantaged children that they may gain a new hope, as our motto states.

Please continue reading; and if you wish to support the project, please visit the school's website using this link [www.bucom.org].

Thank you, Samuel Hephzibah.

The Project Goal

To establish a community-based support project for the provision of regular educational services within the community.

It is our desire that the orphaned children who were helpless get help, find meaningful life and belong to a caring community.
That these children are protected from joining bad groups as a last resort.
It is our desire that all these children get education so that they may be self-reliant.
To give these children good health care by setting up a clinic at the home and have a doctor or a nurse available for them.
To help these children not to think that meaningful life ended after losing their parents.
To train these children in technical skills like carpentry, tailoring, brick laying and computer skills so that they may be job creators and not job seekers.
To create jobs for the people of the community so that they may be able to sustain their families since most of them have no jobs/employment and they cannot sustain their children.

Specific Objectives

Activities/Inputs

Apart from taking care of these children, we purposed that some other activities be carried out as seen below:-

A pre-school [at Goshen] where our children could attain education and others who are beyond pre-school age be taken to different primary [elementary] schools which are not expensive, because of inadequate funds.

1. Education

2. Counseling Services and Career Guidance

We found that our children at the orphanage and others in the neighbourhood needed counseling and career guidance, spiritual guidance so as to be useful citizens. We therefore started carrying out voluntary counseling services and career guidance.

3. Mobilization and Sensitization Programs

We mobilised the people in the neighbourhood and carried out sensitization awareness on HIV/AIDS, general hygiene and malaria control.

4. Games and Sports Activities

We proposed that the children be involved in games and sports, and through training and organizing sports competions with other children outside, would enable these children to interact with others outside and help them rebuild their self-confidence and self-worth.

5. Children's Evangelism

We organise children's crusades and conferences whereby children minister to their fellow children and also invite preachers from outside to minister to them.

6. Establishing small income-generating activities to support them.

7. Provision of skills to the entire community in poultry farming, agriculture, tailoring, bakery and confectionery, and brick laying.

Outcomes

In two years:

6 Coordinators will have been identified and trained.
6 Community-based committees will have been set up.
13 Community-based educators will have been identified and trained.
Over 500 people were mobilized and provided with HIV/AIDS information.
After provision of HIV/AIDS information at least 60% were able to go for HIV/AIDS tests to find out thier serostatus and be able to confess Jesus as their Saviour and get healed.
At least 400 orphans and about 10 widows to be identified and cared for.
At least 40% of the orphans, widows and the entire community have achieved skills from the projects set up by the project.

Project Implementation Strategies

The strategy of this project is to promote AIDS care and prevention through mobilization, sensitization, education, training and socia-economic support. All the community members will be mobilized in order to get involved and participate in planning, implementing and evaluating the project. Some people will be identified and trained to coordinate the project activities.

Monitoring and Evaluation

To make sure that the project is effective and there is an impact, a reporting system will be put in place. This system will monitor the project throughout its entirety. It will be carried out by project workers and community members.

Evaluation will be done annually by the Donors, Agency Workers and community members. Report forms will be designed at each level, and forwarded to the sponsors.

Problems We Are Facing

The major problem we are having is that we don't have land, and we need to buy our own and build a library, chapel and make improvements to the current structure of the school. Currently, we just have six classrooms whereby some children still share a classroom. The baby class and nursery share a class, primary 5 and 6 need classes. This is not helpful to children's learning.

We need to buy another two acres of land, whereby we will build extra classrooms, a chapel, a playground and library, and other activities which are income generating that we may be self-sustaining/reliant.

How Do We Get Funding?

Some people who are touched contribute towards this project, but mostly in material form. They bring food, some provide clothing, books and other educational material, while others provide voluntary services. This has helped us a lot to sustain our project, though with difficulty.

Local churches also provide labour and other simple materials, though they are very low-income earners. We are however, planning to recruit permanent workers who are to be paid because all these voluntary workers are committed with other activities.

The project will seek to raise the necessary resources from the following sources:

Grants from AIDS agencies.
Donations from other NGOs.
Grants from the Government.
Contributions from the community.
Donations from well-wishers.

Budget

To run any project there must be funds. The funds secured for this project will be used for the capital and recurrent expenditures.

Below is a list of our needs, as proposed by our objectives:

Buying two acres of land
Construction of the dormitories and administration block
Construction of a chapel
Playground
Construction of kitchen and dining areas
Construction of workers'/staff houses [six rooms]

If you want to help financially with these projects, please go to the school's website using this link: www.bucom.org