In Uganda a good school education can make the difference between poverty and prosperity. Therefore, we strive to provide good education to all children whose families cannot afford to send them to school.

We strongly believe that all of our children deserve a fair chance to fulfil their potential and to reach the goals they set for themselves. That is why, we provide school sponsorships to the needy and vulnerable children of Nkuringo.

These sponsorships include school fees (mostly of private schools), school materials such as books and pens etc., clothing (casual and school uniforms), food, toiletries and much more.

So far, with the help of our friends and partners from “KUYAMBA – Kinderhilfe Uganda“ in Germany we have been able to give about 100 children the opportunity to go to a private kindergarten, primary, secondary or voacational school. Without this support, these children could not receive any education and would have to stay at home and work hard on the fields to increase their families’ income.

A good school education offers them many opportunities in life, most importantly a decent job to support themselves and their families in the future.

Most families in Nkuringo do not have access to electricity, as it is either unavailable or simply much too expensive.

As a result, these families have to sit in darkness after sunset, as many also cannot afford to buy candles or oil lamps. This is especially bad for school children, as they cannot do their homework, study or simply read after about 6pm.

To tackle this problem, we have equipped more than 60 families with solar panels so far. Each panel comes with a battery, cables and light bulbs and costs about 170 USD, including labour. A small price for such a great effect! We could realise this project through donations from our German partner-NGO “Kuyamba – Kinderhilfe Uganda e.V.”.

With the help of our German partner organisation, we were able to buy a large piece of land in Nkuringo and build two classrooms, a kitchen, a dining area, a football and volleyball pitch, and separate toilets for girls and for boys. Moreover, we have several vegetable beds, shelters for goats, sheep and pigs and even a hut where we grow our own delicious mushrooms. We proudly call this our “Kuyamba Center of Education” (KCE).

We wanted to use renewable sources for water and power, so we installed many large water tanks to collect our precious rain water and a big solar power station that produces more than enough electricity for our lights and computers.

One of the two classrooms is used as a kindergarten or pre-school for 20 children. Within 3 years, they go from baby to middle to top class and have lessons five days a week. They get a good lunch before they spend the rest of the day with their families. Once they finish our kindergarten, they are well equipped for primary school and prepared to achieve good results there.

The second classroom is used for our workshops, especially for our computer workshops. Here, we have a dozen high-quality laptops and our NVCDF children as well as other people from the village can be trained how to use the internet and important computer programs. Not only can they connect with rest of the world, especially our many sponsors, but first and foremost they can obtain important skills that will help them find a job later on, for example in tourism or in any kind of office.

We offer a variety of workshops to the children in our foundation. These workshop are designed to teach them special skills that help them support themselves and their families, now and in the future.

All workshops take place on the grounds of our KCE every weekend, so we organise transport for the children so they can attend our meetings. In the following, we will give you some examples of the educational workshops we offer to the NVCDF children.

Computer Training

Thanks to the donation of more than a dozen new laptops by our friends from KUYAMBA in Germany, we are now able to teach our children some basic computer skills. Those are especially important with regard to the fast growing tourism industry in Nkuringo, which will offer many job opportunities in the future. In order for our children to apply for some of these jobs, however, they must have a basic understanding of computer systems, applications and of course the internet. That is why we had three of our older students trained in the regional capital Kisoro for many weeks so that they can now pass their knowledge on to the other NVCDF children and even adults from the nearby villages. 

Animal Keeping

Goat and sheep keeping are inextricably connected with our culture. This is why it is very important for us to pass this skill on to the children at NVCDF. In order to teach them how to breed and raise domestic animals and how to use their manure for vegetable growing, we built a big shelter on the grounds of our organisation and bought several goats and sheep. Thus, the children learn how to profit from these animals, but also how to keep them in a species-appropriate and sustainable way.

Vegetable Gardening

Vegetables are the most important source of food in Uganda. Thus, knowing how to grow them yourself is a great way to save money and to ensure a healthy diet. We built a big vegetable garden on our NVCDF premises, where we teach children how to plan and plant a vegetable garden and how to grow and harvest vegetables such as cabbage, carrots, salad and many more. Our children also get to take home seedlings to start their own vegetable beds.

Mushroom Growing

Growing mushrooms is quite a complicated process, but we are proud and happy to have produced some very fine results so far. Our children learn how to plant, grow and harvest mushrooms which are then sold to some lodges in Nkuringo, as mushrooms are in high demand. All profits from selling these mushrooms are directly reinvested in our many projects, so the children directly benefit from the money generated by the mushroom project.

Music and Dance

Music, singing and dancing are a vital part of Ugandan culture. Our children love to sing and dance together. Some of the songs they perform are traditional, others are originals that we composed ourselves. Whenever people visit our foundation, the children are happy to show their talent and present our rich musical culture to our visitors in a special performance.