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Sponsor a child

Sponsoring a child provides a consistent education and assists towards other expenses. It can make a huge difference and can be hugely rewarding for both sponsor and child. You will receive pictures and information about your sponsored child and will be able to send gifts and exchange letters.

Why sponsor?

• For a relatively small sum you can transform a child’s future.
• Get to know a child from a completely different background.
• Involve the children in your family – encourage them to learn about another culture and way of life, and to appreciate their own education and other advantages.
• What better use can you think of for around £2 - £5 per week?

It currently costs £102 per year to sponsor a primary school student or preschool child, increasing to £252 for a high school student (this includes tuition and boarding fees, as secondary education is not free in Uganda and the high schools are several hours walk from Bwindi). This amount covers education costs and assists towards food, clothes and other basic needs. It also includes £12 towards bank transfer costs and other overheads (letters, printing, postage etc; ‘Friends of Bwindi Orphanage’ has no paid staff). This is much less than the amount spent on administration and overheads by the sponsor programmes run by larger charities.

You can spread the cost of future payments with regular standing order payments (unlike direct debits, these are controlled by the donor – you – not the recipient). This works out at £8.50 per month or £21 per month.

Most students are offered 4 or 6 years at secondary level. There are no set ages for accessing secondary education as obviously it depends on the amount of education they have already received.

Students who are able to access secondary education consider themselves very privileged and are extremely proud of their situation. All of the children at the orphanage have the highest respect for education and work extremely hard to make the most of their opportunity.

We ask sponsors to consider their sponsorship commitment as continuing until the end of their child’s high school education, although obviously you can decide to end your support at any time. Currently this means that costs increase when a student begins high school, although we hope to support the building of a local secondary school, reducing sponsorship costs for secondary students who will no longer require boarding fees. So please support our fundraising – use our buyat shop and ask your friends to use it too!

The orphanage director Mr Ignatius Byamugisha will inform us when a student has reached Secondary level so that we can let you know.