Drumroll, please!!!!
Feel free to clap, fist bump, high five and dance for joy along with us as we reflect and give thanks for the year that 2017 was. Without further ado, we bring you the OVCP 2017 review.
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Regular Operating Expenditures
Funding from Ugandan Income Generation Vs. Funding from International Donations
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Our home-grown slice of the pie is growing!!
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Almost one-third of the funds we needed to operate in 2017 were made right here in Uganda!! Our operating funds include everything except new infrastructure (see pie chart below). The amount of homegrown income made by OVCP has more than quadrupled compared to the amount in 2015!! These funds come from savings we made from growing some of our own food, selling some of our produce and pigs, sales from locally tailored and sewn pieces, as well as income from school fees from the paying students at our school.
Each time our homegrown piece of the pie grows, we are seeing our mission get another step closer to coming to full fruition.
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The mission is that "Our Village Community Partnership believes in empowering, educating and equipping people so that they can have the strength, skills, and tools necessary to bring long-lasting change to fight poverty in their communities".
Our goal is to be 100% locally funded and as you can see by our progress, step by step and hand in hand, we know we will get there! Thank you for filling the gap and investing in development in Uganda. We always say, 'together we can go further', and the proof is in the pudding! These numbers show that sustainability is not just a dream.
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EDUCATION
36% of all funding in 2017 went directly to education.
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Twenty percent of the total funds for 2017 went directly to furthering education of our partner children, families and staff. This goes towards school fees for youth so that they could continue on with secondary school. We also partnered with 16 young adults so that they could go to college and trades programs in 2017.
Two of these young adults that went on to professional programs are Donna (seen in the picture) and Gembe. We have partnered with them since our very beginning. In the latter half of 2017, Donna started a program to become a Clinical Ophthalmologist and Gembe started a program in Nursing and Midwifery. 2017 was also a year where we were able to celebrate seeing some of these young people graduate from programs in Teaching and Hotel Management. This is truly a dream come true!
We are only able to do this through our partners who donate monthly. This way we can plan and commit to getting these youth through their programs. Thank you so much for the impact you enabled us to make in 2017!
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Adult education has always been a key part of our vision, whether it's going back to school or learning particular skills they can do from home. In 2017 we were able to see ten women graduate from our tailoring program. We also were able to come alongside OVCP staff members and support them to get further education to help them better serve their communities. This came in the form of onsite training for our staff. We also were able to support a leader at OVCP, Afan Wakate, to complete a degree in Social Work.
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In January 2017, we had 250 youth come together in the OVCP multi-purpose hall. The OVCP leadership team is leading these youth through the well-respected John Maxwell Equip leadership course. They are training these youth in how to lead with integrity and providing them with tools to help them succeed in leading their future businesses and families. It is powerful that these youth are receiving this training from fellow Ugandans who personify what it means to lead with faith and integrity. This was our fourth and largest youth gathering yet!
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Sixteen percent of the total funds for 2017 went directly to our primary school (this percentage doesn't include salaries and food, read more on those categories below). Our primary school, Hands of Hope, continued to grow in 2017, now totaling 332 students. Our school brings students from all walks of life together, all of whom receive the same quality of education.
- 223 of the 332 children came from families who can afford to pay to send their children to school. They choose our school because of the standard of education that we provide. This helps bring local sustainability. Our school was our largest local income generator in 2017.
- 35 children came from vulnerable families which partner with OVCP in order to enable them to attend our school at a reduced fee that matches their level of need.
- The remaining 74 children in 2017 came from extremely vulnerable situations and OVCP partners with their family so that they can go to our primary school completely free.
We are proud to say that our primary school, Hands of Hope, got registered at the national level in 2017!
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NUTRITION, HEALTH & SANITATION
28% of all funding in 2017 went directly to nutrition, health and, sanitation.
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28% of our total funding went towards nutrition, sanitation, and healthcare. Generally, these funds go mainly towards providing meals at our school, medical care to partner students, and providing health and sanitation outreaches (including helping families with jiggers in 2017). But, the start of 2017 made it very apparent that we had to respond in another area as well.
The beginning of 2017 started off very hard for many people in our community due to drought. We are an organization that focuses on development, not aid. This means we work to help families provide for themselves rather than giving handouts. This is ideal, but life isn't always ideal. However, the majority of people in our area had nothing to harvest and there is no crop insurance here. Most of the people in our community live off of what they grow, so the food they eat each day comes from their very own gardens. We are grateful that we can come alongside families in times of tragedy, when the ability to plan ahead isn't an option. We got to be a lifeline for families in need in 2017, providing food aid for them to get them through a trying time.
One of the ways many families support their children at school is by bringing food to contribute to the food their children eat at school. This was not an option for many in the first term in 2017. This also increased our spending in this area.
In the area of health and sanitation, we were so blessed in 2017 by Hope Smiles and Southfort Dental Centre, in that all 332 children at our school received dental care and oral hygiene education. Not only that, but now thanks to this partnership, our kids are going to get on-going and regular dental care from Hope Smiles every term!
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STAFF
17% of all funding in 2017 went to paying our Ugandan staff.
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17% of our funding went to salaries for our twenty-six full-time Ugandan staff in 2016. They are the teachers, social workers, matrons, farmers, administrators, and cooks that make everything we do possible. Without them, none of this work could have been accomplished. We are so blessed at OVCP to have such an incredible team of Ugandans leading our organization. Paul Bogere, Afan Wakate, and Betty Achieng are inspiring leaders at OVCP that lead our staff so well.
For half of 2017, we had one Canadian staff member, Terra Lorenz, until August 2017 when she went on maternity leave. Though Terra has worked for Our Village for over the past decade, for the first time ever she had been receiving a wage for the work she does. Funding for her wage came from a donation that was earmarked for this purpose. Since on maternity leave, Lindsay Gabert and Linda Moore have been key volunteers that helped fill this gap. Kelsey Moore continued to edit the OVCP Newsletters in 2017. Terra has also continued to do volunteer work for OVCP during her maternity leave.
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INFRASTRUCTURE
Separate from our operating budget, which includes all of the funds that went towards outreach and maintaining all of our programs (discussed above), we have our infrastructure spending. Our operating budget was 87% of total funding while infrastructure was 13% of total funding in 2017 (quite different from 2016).
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13% of our funding in 2017 went into infrastructure and project start-ups, a lot less compared to 2016. 2017 really was a year where we got to make managing our existing projects a top priority. As poor management is often the downfall of many projects, we are excited to see all of the ways our team has grown and improved our systems in 2017. We also did have some smaller building and start-up projects. We were able to build another pig pen to expand on our pig project. In addition, we built another latrine at our boys' dorm as well as installed a ceiling in our staff quarters. We also started a eucalyptus tree project, where we currently have 3000 trees growing on our property to be used in a long-term timber project.
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2017 Expenditure Breakdown
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*** OVCP funds in Uganda are given from and processed by three amazing partner organizations, The Mandate, Praire Harvest Christian Life Centre and The Great Commission Foundation. Donations are only charged an admin fee from one partner organization and because of this, it helps us keep our admin fees very low. In 2017, our admin fee on donations averaged out to 2% of total funding, and was deducted from within that organization before those particular funds reached Uganda.
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