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A Big, BIG thank you!

 

Dear supporters,

What an unexpected start to the year. We are more amazed than ever now to report that our Emergency Appeal before Christmas raised over £35,000! Your kindness and generosity is hugely appreciated, in fact almost every penny has already been used on urgent needs (or pledged towards essential building works) to allow the school to reopen safely adhering to Kenyan government Covid regulations. This has meant new floors throughout, new ceilings (to keep the bats out) chairs, desks and lockers to maintain social distancing, thermometers, sanitiser, home schooling visits by the teachers, medical supplies and bills etc.. It is a relief that the most vulnerable children have been able to come back to Uzima, and we have sent further funds to feed the other children who have to unfortunately remain at home. 



 

This remains a very challenging and tough situation for the whole Uzima community. We have been in close contact with Evans our Director, and although work is underway, he is struggling to get all the children back. We are still looking at different options. In the meantime, we aim to send more regular funds to help feed the children and their families at home. Without the school, we have noticed with much sadness that some of the children are starting to look thin again. Evans reports that morale is low, as they rely so heavily on Uzima literally for survival. We were sent a touching letter from one family which you can see on Instagram showing just how much the community rely on Uzima, not only for food, but for hope. After you have read the letter, don't forget to click to follow us!




 
There have been many sadnesses due to Covid in the Uzima community, some teachers have suffered and recovered, a couple of guardians have sadly passed away, but thankfully the children themselves remain unaffected by the illness itself. The virus affects poor communities like this one in so many devastating ways. The Uzima Orphan Centre continues to be a beacon of light during these dark days - because we were able to pay the teachers throughout lockdown, the Centre has been able to support those affected, including the teenage girls who became pregnant during the first lockdown. It is amazing what they achieve with so little.

If you would like to help support our food programme and ongoing support to the children affected and their families, we would be hugely grateful for any donation large or small to the continuing Emergency Appeal. Per round it costs around £1200 to feed the children who are at school twice a day and all the families at home with enough food for a month. Although we appreciate every one-off donation, it is worth so much more to Uzima if you are able to give regularly (see our financial bit explaining this below!)

 
Contribute to the Emergency Food Appeal...

Going, going gone! 👏


Thank you to Marie Lax for her sterling efforts to raise over £500 of extra emergency funds by running a Christmas auction for Uzima. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and one trustee in particular was delighted with her surprise gift! Thank you especially to Marie for organising all this, it must have taken a lot of time and attention to detail delivering it all.
We appreciate all the hard work and would also like to thank everyone who donated and had a go at bidding.
 


New Bursary Fund


We have decided to set up a bursary fund for gifted Uzima school-leavers, enabling a few of them to continue to secondary school. The fund will pay for their registration fee, school fees, and any other necessary costs, such as school uniform, materials, and maybe means of transport, such as a bicycle. We estimate the cost of this at about £15 per month per child, for a period of four school years. Supporters could either give a one-off amount to the fund, or commit to paying a regular amount (although all contributions would go into the bursary fund, rather than being linked to particular children). We would commit to awarding at least two bursaries every school year: one for a boy, one for a girl, based on their school results, but would hope to be able to fund at least one or two more, chosen by the head teacher as students who are outstanding in some way. Obviously, the more money we have, the more children we can support! 
 

                   
 

The lucky children to receive these bursaries would be asked only to report back once a year on their school experience and how their studies were going. Their reports would be photographed and circulated around supporters who had contributed.

We think this would be a great way of providing hope and motivation to children currently with few options, who will, we hope, be able to give back to their community in the future.

If you are interested in contributing to the bursary fund, please contact Viv on viv@uzimainourhands.org
 

 

Money Matters -
Making your donations go further


We are so grateful for all your generosity, but if you’ve got a minute, can you consider something? We would be able to commit to increased regular payments to the Centre, if our monthly donations increased. If you were able to consider changing your one-off giving to a regular sum instead by monthly direct debit, it would be a huge help to us, and we would know how many children we can continue to support at Uzima. At present, we are unable to send enough from our regular funds to meet Uzima’s increasing quarterly running costs, and although we have been able to send top-ups due to your faithful generosity, it would be preferable to meet the Centre’s needs more consistently.

If you would be willing to give £15 or £25 (or any amount) regularly each month by d/debit, please click below to fill in your bank details. It is nice and easy and we can also claim GiftAid too.  Thank you so much.
 

I would like to give regularly...

Have any of your details changed? If so, please keep us updated so we can still claim GiftAid. The easiest way is to use this link to complete the short GiftAid form again with your new details. Thank you.

Update my GiftAid details...

Smile, Uzima loves you!

If you haven't already, have you got a minute to register to raise money for Uzima through your online shopping - all you need to do is sign up to the Giving Machine or Amazon Smile.  Just a couple of clicks, it really is that easy. 

St Augustine of Canterbury: The Giving Machine - raise funds while you shop!

You can register for the Giving Machine here


Back us when shopping with Amazon Smile | Swardeston Cricket Club

Generate donations for Uzima on Amazon using SMILE - just register and choose Uzima here

Thank you!


A Sneak Preview -
Our Vision for Uzima

 

Entrepreneurship radically reduces poverty. For this reason we are working on an ambitious and exciting new project for the wider Uzima community, with a charity you may have already come across called Five Talents. Five Talents work in Africa through local church communities to alleviate poverty through delivering business skills and financial savings and loans groups to local people. They have an impressive 100% success rate and the inspirational stories are really exciting about lives changed though the basics of business. If you are interested in reading about their work, you can read the stories on their website www.fivetalents.org

Image result for five talentsThe project is in its early stages, which involves seeking local support from the Bishop of Nambale! But if you would like to read our long term Vision for Uzima, which seeks to break the bonds of poverty in the community at large and offer the region access to skills and hope to really change their lives for good, please email Louise louise@uzimainourhands.org

 

We hope to report back soon with a viable plan and ask you to register your support for project updates. We are going to need to raise more funds than ever over a 3-4 year period, but we believe all things are possible through hard work and the God who loves Uzima!

Sadly due to Covid, there won’t be a visit to Uzima this spring. Joy still hopes to make a progress check out there later this year, we will of course keep you posted.
 

Thank you again for your invaluable support.
Mungu Akubariki,

Uzima in Our Hands Trustees
Joy, Louise, Rachel and Viv 

50% of profits from these lovely t-shirts goes to Uzima!
 

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Address:

12, Sunset Close
Freshwater
Isle of Wight
PO40 9JR​


Tel: 07989211482

Website: www.uzimainourhands.org

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