School fees.....

In February, the schools started again their new school year. And for many, many family's does that mean: SCHOOL FEES!!!!!!

You pay per term and there are three terms in each school year. For every family it means trying to find money to pay the fees of the children. Sometimes they sell their chickens, or goats, they borrow money or try to do extra jobs to get the money together. It happens very regularly that a child, especially in secondary schools, has to drop out for a year, hoping that there is enough money the next year. There are government schools who are almost gratis, but secondary schools are almost always with a fee, unless you are very good, you can get a scholarship.

Education is the key to get out of the circle of poverty, we get also many people coming to Amecet, asking for help with education. On February 9th, I wrote the blog about our "Tante Suus" fund, which helps some of the secondary  students to school. But even we get many asking help for primary school. YWAM, the missionary Organisation where Amecet is also a part of, has two schools: a nursery school and a primary school. As Amecet we started to help some of the vulnerable children who come to Amecet for help. That are children who have lost their parents, due to HIV/AIDS, or other causes, these orphans live with their relatives, uncles or grandparents, and are often under privileged in many things. Also a number have a single mother who has to work hard to provide for her children With paying their school fees to our Harmony Primary school, we help them to get a better education than from the Government schools, where classes have sometimes 100 pupils. This money for the primary children is not coming from tante Suus fund, which is only for secondary education, but from our Amecet funds. 

We sponsor now around 35 children, the children in the brown uniforms are from Harmony nursery school and the red-blue uniform is from Harmony Primary school. 

 Simon, is organising this part of our work, he asked all the caretakers to come and to fill the forms, we made an agreement that the families are taking care for of the uniform, while Amecet is paying the school fees. You can see the Primary school building behind them

Some of the girls, we sponsor. We find it important that girls get all the chances the boys get. In Uganda the children have to follow education until they are 18 years of age. Unfortunate, many drop out because of lack of school fees, but also many girls, because of early pregnancy.