Scholarships
Providing scholarships for needy children
All three schools are in impoverished rural areas where there are large numbers of orphans. If you are able to provide money for a scholarship then it allows a school to offer a place to a bright child who has completed primary schooling but does not have the means to pay for secondary schooling.
Scholarships, which cost £120 per child per year, are welcome for even one year of schooling. Sometimes, if we can get children into school for a year, they can demonstrate their potential and this encourages their remaining family to do their best to raise the money to allow them to continue. The money collected includes a contribution towards general school improvement, which benefits all children.
In very many cases, families have so little cash income that they can never pay even the very low school fees charges by the schools. It is helpful, in these cases, if donors would commit to funding a child through their schooling either by sending money each year or setting up a standing order.
We have been so concerned to prevent children from dropping out once they have started school that we are beginning to pool single year scholarships and bank money to pay school fees for the whole of a child’s schooling.
Each scholarship always goes to a named child and donors are sent some information about the child and a photograph.
When we started to provide scholarships one or two donors exchanged letters with the students they were supporting. A reply from one of the girls is shown below. In order to avoid any hint of jealousy among the students, the schools now prefer contacts, if they exist at all, to be very discreet. They don’t even want their teachers to know which students are being supported from outside for fear it leads to unintended bias. However, we are encouraging the schools to get children to write to the Trust from time-to-time to tell us about their schooling. When we receive the letters we will post them on this website.
You may notice that in this secular school, one of Mary’s favourite subjects is Religious Education. As in the UK, RE is a compulsory in Ugandan schools. However, the Humanist schools use it to introduce students to both religious and secular world views. The schools organise an annual Camp Quest, where they bring together a selection of teachers, students and local villagers to take part in social activities and to learn about secular-Humanism.