Fundraising for the completion of a Classroom block and the construction of a modern boy’s dormitory
URICT – Joy Children’s Home is a project of URICT – Uganda. Founded in 2005 by Andrew Gabula to respond to the overwhelming needs of the HIV/AIDS Orphans in the Community. HIV/AIDS have affected each and every family in Kamuli Eastern Uganda, in so doing there is a social breakdown in many aspects. Though Uganda has made some success in the fight against HIV/AIDS, it only sounds good on paper and urban areas not in the rural remote poor Villages where URICT is operating. Over the years we have been so blessed with friends from different parts of the world who have stood with us. We have been able to establish a community school serving close to 400 HIV/AIDS affected Children aged 5yrs to 17yrs. We have made success in creating access to safe clean water and many other projects as you will see in our Achievements list below.
This holiday season we are fundraising for the completion of a Classroom block with 6 classrooms and the construction of a modern boy’s dormitory. We are targeting to fundraise $48,500USD for both projects.
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Examples of what your donation can do!
$1 – pays for a concrete brick
$5 – pays for a whole day’s labour wage of a builder
$10 – pays for a Bag of Cement & it’s transport to the construction site
$20 – pays for an iron sheet for roofing
$50 – pays for a bundle of roofing timber
$100 – pays for a window
$150 – pays for a door
$200 – pays a set of glasses for windows or doors
$500 – pays for a unit of solar installations
$750 – pays for water installations in the dormitory
$1,000 – pays for painting of the buildings
$5,000 –pays for entire roofing of the Classroom block
$25,000 – pays for the construction of the whole classroom block
Achievements of URICT - Uganda since its establishment, under Andrew Gabula’s leadership
Primary School for children aged 4yrs to 14yrs
From 2007 to 2012 we established a Community Primary School for children aged 4yrs to 14yrs, currently the school has a total enrolment of 420 Orphans and Vulnerable Children and employing 17 teaching staff members and 8 non-teaching staff members. The school is managed independently but URICT maintains an “eyes on, hands off” relationship with the school’s management to ensure effectiveness and efficiency.
Vocational & Life Skills Training Center
In 2014 we started working on building a Vocational & Life Skills Training Center in Kamuli. Initially we started with training in Tailoring/Sewing/Knitting and Carpentry. Currently total enrollment for Tailoring department is standing at 120 Women aged 15yrs to 30yrs (most these are single mothers, teenager mothers and widows), while carpentry has 85 mainly boys and young men, aged 15yrs to 35yrs.
Art & Crafts
Earlier on in 2016 we started the making of art & crafts, this includes paper beads/jewelry making of table mats, door mats, rags, house decorations etc. These are all selling items and this department of art and craft has an enrolment of 65 women and girls and employs a group of 18 women. It’s through these self-empowerment projects, that we officially opened the URICT – Micro-Finance Group, which has 220 Members. Through this arrangement, members save, get group loans, learn more on local investing and hence we are already seeing a change in their incomes.
WASH project
In 2012 URICT started on a WASH project. This involved protecting water wells, drilling boreholes while training women in the making of Bio Sand Water filters. Since this is more of a social enterprise project, apart from its charity merits, it has created jobs for 1,800 women who are making and selling Bio Sand water filters all over Eastern Uganda. These are women who have now improved on their household incomes while creating access to safe clean water for hundreds of thousands of people in this sub region. In 2015 we started Soap making and this has also created many jobs while providing locals with affordable liquid soap. URICT staff developed training manuals for WASH and use it as a guideline for community sensitization programs to raise awareness about the importance of homestead and personal hygiene as ways of reducing spread of diseases. Since 2016 we carried out 50 Community training about sanitation and hygiene reaching out to over 20,000 people.
Motherhood and Maternal Health Project
In 2010, we started the Safe Motherhood and Maternal Health Project in partnership with Emerge Poverty Free UK. In so doing we were able to reduce infant and maternal mortality in Kamuli & Buyende. Under this Health & Care Program, we have partnered with different stakeholders to provide TB/HIV/AIDS drugs to 2,000 Women and Children living with HIV/AIDS. At the same time we provide free condoms, carry our awareness campaigns, Mobile free HIV testing and on-going counseling. We have also distributed treated mosquito nets to 5,000 households. Under the reproductive health projects, we have embarked on promoting menstrual hygiene through which we have distributed re-usable and non-reusable pads to 780 underprivileged school girls and we have also trained 200 rural women to make re-usable sanitary pads for their family members that last for a period of one year.
In 2013, we established model farm in Kamuli on a 36 acre piece of land. This farm was initially established to produce food supplies for the Children’s Center and Kamuli Community School, but we quickly realized that it can easily become self-sustaining if we also started Crop & Animal-Husbandry Agriculture School at this farm. This farming School is now training locals in modern farming methods, pest control, harvest management and value addition. Since it’s opening, it has trained over 2,000 households and employees 15 staff members. It’s also offering extension services to the local peasants within the district of Kamuli. The success of this farming project informed and we learned that there is need to go into agro-forestry farming, so in Dec/2013 we acquired 800 acres of land in Kamuli and we started tree farming, we started by planting 1,000,000 trees of different spices. The main target here is mainly to protect the environment while attracting an income to sustain our different projects. We have also introduced vegetable and fruit trees on this establishment while the community has also gotten involved. Last year we introduced Bee-farming in this project and fish-farming is already under way. This project has been a cash-cow for URICT while different schools from all over Eastern Uganda come for study and research and at the same time, it has created food security for well over 2,000 households in the last 6years. This project is also paying School fees and providing scholastic materials to all the 420 Orphans and Vulnerable Children we have at Kamuli Community School. Currently Incomes from this project is also paying school fees for 180 other Children in High Schools (Rape Hurts Foundation sponsors children who graduate from our school to continue with their education in different high schools in Uganda), it’s also paying Tuition fees for 75 University & College Students who have passed through the hands of Rape Hurts Foundation, these are students who will be graduating with degrees and diplomas in different fields and some are already returning to their respective villages to create change. This project has enjoyed a lot from support locally and internationally and in 2016 we made a replica of the same in Butaabala Village. It’s still under this project where we have provided 500,000 solar lights to households, so that they can stop using oil lamps which causes several diseases to humans while affecting the environment.
URICT projects are designed and implemented following a holistic/integrated approach that focuses on the physical and psychological needs of Children & Women in their totally while paying attention to how their social, political, cultural, economic surroundings influence their wellbeing. URICT strives to ensure all interventions are geared towards sustainability, the long term. URICT is a growing and learning organization open to ideas, suggestions, criticisms, technical support and guidance so that we can move towards total self-reliance and be able to serve our clients even much more better.
