Dear friends and supporters of the MiekFoundation,
Thanks so much to all our generous donors for your continued, very generous, and highly appreciated support to the MiekFoundation throughout the past year! This was the first full school year post COVID. In November Willemijn and Peter visited Uganda again and it was great to see the wonderful progress that was made since our last visit in September 2022.
Visiting the schools in Buyege, the Safe Center, and the Bussi Island community was both highly inspirational, energizing and humbling. We found it uplifting to see the positive strides made by the individuals we support.
A few reflections on 2023
2023 Was a good year for the MiekFoundation. At the beginning of the year, we carefully expanded the group of girls we support in the boarding school program. To maximize our impact, we decided to put a stronger focus on the admission of new girls at Secondary school level. It was fabulous to meet all the girls again in November and to see that they are all happy and healthy – and that they are making wonderful progress, in terms of their school results, as well as in their development towards becoming independent, open and vocal personalities. All of them have great hopes and dreams for their future! Our dream at the MiekFoundation is ‘to make their dreams come true’. Given the increasingly tough (economic) circumstances, the girls will need a lot of support going forward.
Our Safe Center on Bussi Island has also made significant strides, now providing support to a group of 60-80 primary school girls and boys every weekend and during school breaks. We extended the opening hours during the year. And mid 2023, we expanded our support to Secondary School kids as well , but obtaining qualified teachers for the island posed challenges. Thanks to our local partners we now have a wonderful group of teachers as well as parents supporting the Safe Center. A core part of the curriculum is the life skills module, where we help the children become more self-confident, aware, and resilient, and to avoid child abuse and teenage pregnancies, which sadly remain significant challenges on Bussi Island.
Our ambition for 2024
In the upcoming year, we will continue scaling our School Program and the Safe Center. Early 2024 we will add a third module to our program – aiming to empower women on Bussi Island by assisting them in establishing their businesses through a partnership with 100WEEKS. In our team we have an ongoing discussion about the impact we want to generate and about ways to measure and increase that impact over time. For now, that resulted in the following ambitions and actions for 2024:
- Our local partners are selecting an additional group of girls to start at Boarding school after the Uganda Christmas break in February. In the coming year we will also intensify the coaching and mentoring program that we started in 2022, to make sure the girls take ownership of their own destiny and future education and make the right choices early on.
- We also agreed with the community that we will continue supporting the girls with higher education after Secondary school, to maximize their future chances. Now that the first girls will graduate soon, a few of them will likely move to higher education in 2024. In November, we visited several schools (e.g., Medical, Fashion, Technical, Agriculture, Food) that we could cooperate with. It will be exciting new to see the first girls move to a different stage in the coming year!
In 2024 we will substantially increase the capacity of our Safe Center to allow more Secondary School children to participate. Therefore, we will construct a second building and recruit new teachers. Also, we will shape and innovate the curriculum for all groups (esp. Life Skills and practical skill building) to keep up the energy and excitement of the children that come to the center and avoid drop-outs. - With our local partners and the Dutch startup 100WEEKS, we will launch 2 groups of 20/25 women each, that the 100WEEKS team will coach, with the objective of getting them out of poverty by helping them build their own businesses. The concept (typically ~75% is out of poverty after 100WEEKS) is based on a combination of weekly cash donations, trainings and saving groups. By helping the women (some of them will be mothers of the girls we support) of Bussi we hope we can contribute to the lives and livelihoods of an even larger group of families.
2023 Has been a wonderful year for the MiekFoundation and for the great girls of Bussi, who need and deserve our support so much! We are fully committed, energized and passionate to boost our impact in 2024 by shaping and scaling our existing initiatives and by adding a third pillar to our program. We are immensely grateful for the wonderful and very generous support that so many of you have given us again in 2023 and we sincerely hope that you will continue supporting us in 2024 so that together we can help the girls of Bussi and their families make their dreams come true!
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND THE BEST WISHES FOR ALL OF YOU FROM ALL OF US AT THE MIEKFOUNDATION AND ESPECIALLY FROM THE GIRLS OF BUSSI!
