Reflections on 2020 and looking ahead 2021
Dear friends of the MiekFoundation,
THANK YOU for your great support to the MF in 2020, a year that has been a rollercoaster for all of us. In this note, we would like to reflect on the past year and, more importantly, look forward to what we believe will be a very exciting 2021.
Looking back on 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Uganda very hard. The country went into full lockdown at the end of March. Subsequently, all schools closed and will only open again earliest in a few months from now. Unfortunately, as a result we could not reach the children we were supporting. On top of this, many families are suffering badly from the economic crisis, which will imply that many parents will keep their children away from school as they need them to support their family by working in the garden or the family business.
Also, we felt that, building on the experience of the past years, the MF needs to move to a new level together with strong local partners. Therefore, we decided to re-start the MF in a different way post-COVID. To shape this exciting next phase, we have been working very closely with our new, local, very experienced and passionate partners Andrew Musoke, Patricia Mucheri (Senior Advisors at SD Advisory Limited, a boutique consulting firm with a mission to build the capacity of community based organizations to address neglected service delivery gaps within their communities) and Betty Walakira (founder and executive director of the NGO Health Child with which we will cooperate closely going forward). Health Child focuses on creating safe and secure environments for children and their parents, so that, girls can experience a safe and fruitful childhood and that they grow to become responsible and productive adults in their communities. This is perfectly in line with the mission and the values of the MF.
Our new approach is based on three core access points through which we reach the young girls in Schools; within their Communities where they live, have their homes, churches, youth groups, local businesses; and where they access services such as the Health Facilities within their community where they may go to seek treatment or counselling safely.
We feel that a holistic approach is critical as we realized that successfully reaching children in just one of these areas could be unraveled by deficits in another area. For example: our previous program that focused on providing tuition support for children ended as school closed due to the lockdown. Other children are at risk of not coming back to school because they have been married off by their parents, had unplanned pregnancies or found work and are no longer interested in school. Given the above, we think the right approach is one that also includes the community support systems.
This new approach will enable us to scale our impact whilst staying true to our mission to significantly improve living circumstances and educational opportunities for underprivileged children and adolescents in Africa with a long-term perspective together with the local community. Given the above-mentioned risks, we decided to initially focus on girls.
Our local friends performed extensive research in Uganda and based on their guidance, we decided to initially focus on one of the Bussi Islands, an archipelago of small islands about 25 minutes by boat of the coast off mainland Uganda in Lake Victoria. Together, the MF is now launching three initiatives:
- Schools: We launched an initiative to identify (with community leaders) and support high potential girls whose families are struggling to afford school fees. As a start, we committed the support a first group of 10 girls at a high-quality and safe boarding school on the mainland during their entire school period (primary and secondary school i.e., up to 10 years). The intention of the MF is to significantly increase this number over time. We are looking for ways to support the school itself as well, for example by connecting teachers in Uganda with teachers in the Netherlands through exchange programs and by providing them with education materials. The first group of girls will start at the boarding school on April 1 2021 (COVID permitting….).
- Safe Spaces: Together with local community leaders, we will create safe spaces that address specific needs of girls. The first safe space is targeted on ~40 girls for whom we will organize a safe environment in which they will get additional education, life skill building, adolescent health information, music, sports and dance. The safe space will also support holiday apprentice programs such as partnering with a local crafts shop or a sowing atelier that can provide apprentice opportunities for the girls. Over time we aspire to also work with select health centers for confidential counselling, consultation and treatment. Also, we are looking for opportunities to support radio talk shows to reach girls, parents and community members. We are shaping the Safe Spaces approach and will launch the first safe center in Q1 of 2021.
- Agriculture: Our partners of NGO Health Child have just completed a pilot in which they supported over 60 mothers in developing their own agri business by providing them with small pieces of leased land which allowed them to independently grow crops like soybeans. The money they earned provided more independence for the mothers as well as additional income for their families which they committed to (partly) use to pay for school fees so that their children could go to school rather than stay at home to work. With Health Child we will launch a second pilot before the next rainy season end of Q1 2021.
We are very excited about the re-start of the MiekFoundation. We are confident that we will increase our impact very significantly and in a much more sustainable way that is anchored in and, most importantly, supported by the local communities that we will support in a way that benefits them the most.
As you will understand, the commitments we are making require significant financial resources. We are grateful that several of you have supported us so gracefully in the past years. We are developing new types of sponsorships and support models. There will be lots of opportunities to support us both financially (e.g., supporting school fees and living costs for individual girls in our boarding school or supporting the development of Safe Spaces or the Agri project for mothers, or one-off donations) or in different ways (e.g., knowledge to further shape the concepts we are developing, partnerships with schools in the Netherlands). We would love to create an active community of friends and family of the MF that support the efforts we are launching with a big smile on all of our faces when we think about the wonderful person after which this MiekFoundation was named!
We wish you and your loved ones happy holidays and a fantastic start of the new year! Thanks again for your support so far and we hope the girls of the Bussi Islands can count on you again in the future!
With love,
The MiekFoundation
