Children’s Trail

Dear Parent/Sponsor/Supporter,

RE: END OF TERM TWO REPORT, 2023

On behalf of the directors, administration and the entire fraternity of BECU, I send you warm greetings and thank you for the invaluable support and cooperation you have portrayed in the term. It has been a wonderful term and everyone here enjoyed the caring, teaching and learning.

All the children under our care are doing very well.

Today Friday 18^th August 2023, we have closed the term and broken up for the holidays after covering successfully the programmed activities. Children have been sent home for a one month vacation. They will be expected to report back to school on 18^th September, 2023.

ACADEMICS

As usual our children have done very well in all the internal and external sets of examinations. Three sets of examinations were done including beginning of term, mid-term and end of term exams and District mock examination for specifically Primary Seven class.

The results are really very promising. Many of our pupils in lower and middle primary presented better skills of reading and writing which led to great improvement in performance.

Primary seven sat for an external mock examination and the results were very promising.

We were again the second best performers in the district having 25 pupils in division one and 33 in division two. We did not register any candidate in division three, four and nine or failure. See the attached general mark record sheet for our primary seven pupils.

HEALTH

We registered some few cases of sickness including fever, flue and cough, ulcers e.t.c but all were managed by our school nurse. With experience of utilization of services at our medical clinic we require a minimum of USD $500 per month to stock the needed medicine to continue providing services to our school children and the neighbouring community.

DISCIPLINE

Generally our learners are God fearing. They have been well behaved throughout the term. While our children are there with you in a one month vacation, you’re requested to give particular attention and observation to their discipline and continue guiding them.

SCHOOL FEES

We are humbled and appreciate you, our dear parents and sponsors, for prompt payments. The new school policy on fees greatly helped us in collecting the school fees. For term two, we were able to collect 99% of the school fees. We request you to keep it up.

SCHOOL CANTEEN PROJECT

In the last PTA general meeting, parents approved the establishment of a school canteen. Here parents are required to purchase all pupils’ general personal requirements for children strictly from the canteen. The establishment of the school canteen was budgeted at USD $8,500 and parents committed to contribute $3,000 and tasked the school to solicit for $5,500 to have the canteen project done and therefore each of the parents is requested to contribute $10 effective next term for the establishment of the school canteen project.

Once the canteen is in place, it will deal in stationery, children’s drinks, snacks and eats and other children’s needs. The reason behind having the canteen nearby the school is to control movements of parents and children to trading centres to buy the required school needs. Therefore for convenience purposes, the canteen shall be required to stock all the school requirements.

AGRICULTURE

BECU gardens especially farm land II are doing well and yields have been well as per expectations. We believe we have enough food to run the orphanage throughout the year.

The chicken, mushrooms and goat project are also doing well. We currently own 95 goats and they are housed in a new shelter provided with support from BUCC. Our goats are well protected from suns and heavy rains that could cause them to fall ill. We hope our goat herd will continue growing and by next reporting we shall be having more than 100 goats.

The egg-laying chickens are now 500 in number while the broilers (meat chicken) are now 200. In total, we currently rear 700 chickens.

These give us eggs which we feed our children but we also sell some in the local market in the Bwindi area.

We believe if we have irrigation on both agriculture farms and also increase the numbers of goats and chicken, improve vaccination and feeding, we shall reap enough produce in crops, eggs, chicken and goats e.t.c which we shall sell and enhance our income thus leading to self-sustainability in future.

VOCATIONAL LEARNING ROOMS

With support from BUCC, we are constructing two vocational learning rooms in which we intend to provide training in agriculture and tailoring. We are hopeful these two learning rooms will be completed by September.

Our prayer is to raise enough funds to equip the learning rooms with office equipment and sewing machines. We need about $4,000 to equip these rooms to have them ready and process licensing and registration of a vocational school. We hope to open this school in January 2024.

Thanks to BUCC for funding the vocational school construction and promise to pay the instructor/trainer a salary for the first two years of operation.

UTILITIES

The deep borehole provided with funding from BUCC is doing well and is providing sufficient water for the school and the neighbouring community. The current challenge we have is power outages and therefore, there is need for more solar panels to provide additional lights for evening and night time study. We require $2,400 to have more solar panels installed.

EDUCATION SPONSORSHIPS

We are so grateful to BUCC family and more especially Donna, for your tireless efforts to solicit new sponsorships for our OVC’s. God bless you.

CONCLUSION

We wish you the best in all your endeavours during the holidays. Our offices will always be open, parents and visitors feel free to come around in case of any need.

To our donors and sponsors, you are truly the best.

Thank you.
Sincerely,

FRANCIS  BYAMUKAMA
Director