Girls attending the Buhugu Secondary School in Sironko, Uganda
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2012 Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya
Forgirlsake raised $15,400 to build
the only girls' boarding school at
the Camp. Construction is underway
to provide a safe learning environment
for 250 girls attending grades 7
through 12.
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2011 Urubamba, Peru
Forgirlsake raised $5,780 to establish a textile-teaching course, providing an opportunity for indigenous girls teaching the course to attend school. Its financial success will resonate in their community and the program aims to break racial barriers between indigenous and non-indigenous groups.
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2010 Morogo, Tanzania
This year our objective was to raise $6,265 to fund a
solar-powered computer lab for the Sega girls’ school
in Tanzania. Instead, we raised $9,273 and were able to purchase additional computers and provide internet
access for approximately three years.
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2009 Maasai Mara, Kenya
In this past year we raised funds for a library at a girls'
secondary school under construction in Maasai Mara, a rural
region of Kenya with a high poverty rate. Instead, we surpassed our original fundraising goal and raise $9,600!
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2008 Sironko, Uganda
In 2007 we accomplished our goal of sending seven girls to high school. Later we discoverd that nine more girls from the same elementary school had passed the graduation exams — so how could we stop there? In 2008 we raised an additional $6,950, and now these nine other girls are also on a path that can offer them and their community new opportunities.
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2007 Sironko, Uganda
In our founding year, our goal was to raise $4,200, $20 at a
time, to send five Ugandan girls to secondary school for four
years. Instead, we collected $6,350! The additional funds
enabled us to send a total of seven girls from the village
of Sironko in eastern Uganda, to Buhugu Secondary School. |
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info@forgirlsake.org |
2007-2008 Sironko, Uganda
Thanks to donations of mostly $20 since 2007, we have raised $14,625,
enabling 16 girls to attend high school in Sironko, Uganda. |
In 2009, three years after we launched Forgirlsake, we are thrilled with our success in providing educational opportunities for 16 girls in Sironko. It is equally gratifying that our sponsors believed in
us and supported us in this endeavor. With $20 donations, it is proof that every individual can make a
difference, and together we helped provide a new world of opportunity for 16 bright, eager girls.
Gimugu Kiboman, head teacher at Buhugu Secondary, writes, “In Uganda we have realized how
important it is to educate women. In fact the motto of one female hall of residence in Makerere
University sums it up, “Train a woman a nation trained”. Meaning educated women form the basis of
a wellbehaved, hardworking society. In other words they form the basis for national development.
See entire letter to our partners at African Baobab, Inc., thanking us for the funding.
A glimpse into their lives
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Jacalyn Shepherd, Co-Founder of African Baobab, Inc., listened to the stories of some of the girls we
are sending to school. Only a few edits were made to these excerpts in an effort to transcribe what was spoken.
Kainza Mary, 14
I live with my father and mother and a goat. My brother is a drop out. He stopped school because of school fees. I like commerce and English. We all knew we would pass. When I come home I wash plates with water I fetch. English, chemistry. One of the branches of science deals with the study of matter. I use a paraffin candle at night to read. I share my bed with my sister. Four sisters. We sleep on a mattress on the floor.
Muzaki Juliet, 14
My mother and three brothers and two sisters. My sister Recbecca and I sleep and talk together. We sleep on the mattress on the floor. At home we speak Lugisu. Sometimes we have soap, sometimes no food. It is dry so food shorages. We are planting beans and maize, goundnuts. Supper tonight will be cassava.
Kakayi Sharon, 14
My parents are no longer here. I stay with my aunt, a sister of my mother. I came from Busoga. I will be a doctor because I want to treat people. I have sisters and one brother. They are far away. I am 14. I like the environment here, water, Shared Blessings [local non-profit organization],a health center.
Namutosi Esther, 15
I live with my dad and step-mother. Two brothers and five sisters. We sleep together. No mosquitoe net, we have no money to buy it. My mother died. My new mother is four years with us. No breakfast, we get
food at school and that is good. No one has mosquote net, hard when sleeping on floor. Five times a year we get malaria, we buy tablets. We now have a natural resistence.
Nakusi Joyce, 15
I live with my mother and one brother and one sister. We have only a hen. No one here has a cow. I wash some plates. I dig in the garden beans and cassava. We roast it. When very hungry we eat it raw. Just get root and eat it for starch. For energy. I read biology. Some of us have bibles. We all like to sing and dance.
Educating Girls in Sironko, Uganda: A Talk with Wilber
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Wilber Madaba, educator and founder of Shared Belssings (the organization in Sironko that distributed our scholarship funds) talks about the barriers to girls’ education.
In Sironko the girls cannot go home and do homework. When they get home their mothers say, “You have been sitting all day, now it is your time to work”. The girls do the washing and cleaning and there is no encouragement to go to school and do well. A boy can be late coming home after football and no one questions him as to where he has been. And he can do homework. Most girls will just drop out because they have missed so much of their education. So Wilber tells the girls that at school they must work twice as hard since they cannot study at home.
White light shines on the mountain at the girls’ school. Wilber points and says that is the light of God’s blessing touching us. See more photos.
Sironko District is located in the eastern region of Uganda. It is a rural area where most of the houses
are made of grass-thatched roofs, with mud/wattle walls and rammed earth floor.
HIV/AIDS is among the top ten causes of mortality in the district, with an estimated number of 24,609 infected people. The impact of the epidemic is great on the individuals, families and community. A
large number of children have been orphaned. There are culturally rooted challenges in carrying out interventions. Parents avoid talking to their children about sex and HIV/AIDS, and although voluntary counselling and testing is being encouraged, there is a poor response by men.
Sironko district has a high prevalence of child abuse cases, perpetuated by a number of causes, namely peer (boy/girl) relationships, rape, inability of parents/guardians to provide for their families, and a
general preference for boys at the expense of girls. This has consequently increased the number of child pregnancies, child marriages, child mothers/parents, unwanted pregnancies, and street children.
These and other causes have resulted in a high level of school dropouts. The education sector, which has inadequate physical facilities and poor staff welfare, is an environment hostile to girls.
Reports indicate that poor performance and increased dropouts prevail as a result of gender inequalities and discrimination at the community and individual levels. Such discrimination includes preference for educating boys over girls. Girls miss out on educational opportunities due to the dominant perception among the population that girls are a source wealth, along with the unbalanced domestic workload between boys and girls both at home.
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