How your money is helping

Money well spent in Uganda

Street Child Africa Trustees ask themselves many questions. “Is the money we are sending to a project in Africa used as  we intended?”  followed by a secondary question “Is our money having the desired impact on the problem we are trying to solve?”

Our project called ‘Child Headed Households’ grew out of a research initiative among a displaced group of adults and children living in impoverished villages in Jinja, Uganda. The group consists of 53 girls and boys. Many of them are Karamojong and have been forced from their homelands in Northern and Eastern Uganda by famine and armed conflict. Most of the children are orphaned (or living without parental supervision) hence the name of the project. The children look after themselves but are assisted by local adults who have in turn been supported by Street Child Africa.

The adults who form our core team working on the project, are selfless people. Although they have little in material wealth themselves they have worked with little personal reward for themselves and have given the children so much. We decided that they were trying to do too much themselves and we have come up with alternatives that will relieve them of some of the burden.

Apart from funding accommodation and food we also fund education. There is a belief in sub Saharan Africa that the only way forward is through education. Some of our children attend a remarkable school called Lordsmeade Vocational Training College founded and funded by an expatriate Englishman John Kirkwood. He has given much of his own wealth to supporting the school and the results are stunning. Happy, smiling and well educated kids who have and will achieve so much against some dreadful odds.

So the answer to both trustees’ questions

is a HEARTY yes!

Chris Bourne, Street Child Africa Trustee