Achievements

Friends of Bwindi is still a young organisation, and a small one, but we feel that our beneficiaries have achieved a remarkable amount with the funds and other support we have provided.

Students and Families

The first student sponsored by Friends of Bwindi has now completed his diploma and has a job in a town near to his home village.

We began to support Amim at the beginning of his diploma course at Makerere university Business School in Kampala, a 12 hour journey from his home in the Bwindi region. We provided ongoing support for educational and living expenses for the entire course, and for an extra course in computer use.

Amim has always said that he hoped to use his education to benefit others, and he wasted no time - while studying in Kampala he rented a PO box which he used to start a parcel appeal for orphans,. Supporters from the UK sent parcels of clothes, toys, educational items and other gifts which Amim distributed to orphans in Uganda and Rwanda, giving great joy to many children.

Dixon contacted us in the spring of 2008, during the final semester of his degree course at Makerere university in Kampala. His fiance was pregnant and he had no funds to pay for the final installment of his university fees, without which he could not graduate. We had very little funding available at the time but managed to raise enough to over university fees, while Dixon worked to pay for living expenses for himself and fiance Eunice, whilst completing his final project. Dixon's dissertation was about dissemination of health information to reduce the prevalence of HIV/AIDs, and was due to be submitted during the week that his daughter was born. The baby was named after the volunteer who had kept in touch that summer and raised raised that funds to pay for the fees. Dixon graduated in January 2009, with a 2:1 honours degree.

Dixon now works for a newspaper in Kampala, supporting his fiance Eunice who now has a grant to study at the university. Dixon is passionate about education, particularly for girls, and has started a non-profit organisation to encourage reading in Uganda, the 'Reading Initiative Foundation (RIF) to teach and promote reading culture in Uganda, creating and sharing ideas for interesting projects to make learning and teaching fun. He was hired in March 2010 for a consultancy with the British Council in Uganda, organising workshops for children and teachers to promote reading and for Ugandan teachers to share effective teaching methods.

Friends of Bwindi have made other one-off grants to students and families, and we are now supporting several high school students on an ongoing basis. All of the students currently supported by Friends of Bwindi are orphans living in sibling-headed households.

Stay Safe Children Foundation (SSCF)

Stay Safe Children Foundation (SSCF) is a community organisation that started in June 2007, and Friends of Bwindi have supported them for the last two years.

Our first grant covered 1 years rent of a building for offices and workshops, a sign to go outside and furniture, stationary and other essentials. With no funds available for teachers, volunteers from the community have shared their skills to teach various traditional crafts to groups of girls.

When the year had ended the group were forced to move premises as the landlord wanted them for other uses, but our grant enabled them to rent new premises, this time with mains electricity - still a comparatively rare commodity in rural Uganda. The building will provide offices, accomodation for some volunteers and workshops for an expanded programme of training, as another purchase from our grant was three sewing machines for tailoring lessons to teach the girls to make their own clothes, and hopefully provide a source of income in the future. Our grant also paid for a laptop computer which should greatly assist the administration of the organisation. Previously volunteers could only access computers by using an internet cafe, which is very expensive. The group have also printed t-shirts with the SSCF logo for volunteers and members.

Bwindi Community Hospital

During 2009 we made a grant to the hospital to cover the costs of Bwindi Hospital's poster campaign to inform people over a wide rural area about preventative healthcare such as use of nets to prevent malaria, and services available at the hospital including HIV testing and treatment. The campaign included 8 billboard posters and 330 smaller posters, with some in English and some in Rukiga, a local language. The hospital trains peer educators from the local community, and they feature in some of the posters around the region.

Until December 2006 there was little HIV testing and no treatment for a population of 41,000 people in Kanungu district. Since then Bwindi Hospital has secured funding for free HIV counseling and testing, and has tested over 17,000 people, finding a prevalence rate of 7%. They are able to offer antiretroviral drugs provided by the Joint Clinical Research Centre, prolonging the lives of many people and giving them time to plan for their childrens futures. The poster campaign funded by our grant enabled the hospital to publicise preventative health messages and hospital services over a wide rural area around Bwindi, including HIV services and malaria nets.

"Countless numbers of people will benefit from the knowledge that they can be tested and treated at Bwindi Community Hospital, as it is not only HIV positive individuals who will benefit, but also their spouses, children, loved ones, and the greater community as a whole. People who have been forced into dependence upon others because of poor health can become self-reliant once again. On behalf of Bwindi Community Hospital and the 41,000 people we serve, many, many thanks for helping us to make this possible."