The Acts of Kindness Fund & Learning Program

For the last few months the focus of the Small Acts of Kindness Fund has been the Sserinya Primary School and their incredible teachers.

While the school is currently closed due to COVID restrictions, the Ugandan government has stated that schools will reopen in January 2022 to in-class teaching.  Teachers, and the schools, are currently facing two challenges. The first is a significant gap in funding for salaries due to government cutbacks and secondly is what to do until January to have some income coming in.

Through the generous support of our donors, we have been able to raise (to date) the funds to support the salaries of two teachers for the entire upcoming scholastic year.  This campaign and your commitment to the concept of the Small Acts of Kindness Fund, impacts on the ability to keep teachers in the classroom and in-turn on educating the children of the community.

For this update, we wish to introduce you to Mr. Kabanda Joseph Mukasa, one of the teachers that you are supporting.

Mr. Mukasa was a born in Villa Maria, located in the Kalungu district of Uganda. He studied at Byana primary school; King David high school; St Joseph S S Villa Maria; Mummy’s Institute of Beauty, Design and Commercial Studies and Kabukunge Primary Teachers College.

He teaches several subjects including social studies and the humanities (origin of man, his social, political and economic life and the interdependence between man and the environment) to the upper primary classes of P4 to P7 with students aged 10 – 15.

When BBS asked Mr. Francis Kiweewa, the headmaster, why Mr. Mukasa is a teacher, he shared "he loves teaching the youngsters because of the passion he has of sharing knowledge, the zeal of wanting to know more because the children also share knowledge. He wants to pass on life skills and knowledge to the young generation to help mould their future. He wants to be part of a child’s future, part of their transformation process as he transforms the community."

What has Mr. Mukasa been doing during the school closure due to COVID 19? During this time, he has concentrated on his craft work skills and especially making shoes. Despite this, he is ready to get back into the classroom and when he does to pass on the skills of shoe making to his learners and spark the desire to become an entrepreneur.

While we have shifted our focus of the Small Acts of Kindness Fund to a new UN project that has local government approval in the Badakshan province of Afghanistan, individuals can still give to the teachers of Sserinya Primary School through the fund by selecting the "make a donation of your choice" option as opposed to one of the pre-set donation levels.

We're delighted to have had the opportunity to introduce you to Mr. Mukasa and our most sincere thank you for ensuring that these passionate and dedicated teachers will be in the classroom in January!

On behalf of Business for Better Society and the Sserinya Primary School, our best wishes to you for a happy, healthy, and joy-filled new year.

When we created this appeal, it was to help address the needs of some of the projects that we support and to also demonstrate the impact of small donor gives. The focus of this report is to provide an update on several projects and share some of our next steps.

For the past 12-months, BBS spearheaded a school garden project at NY DINA College in rural Madagascar.  The objectives of this project were to create gardens to produce a variety of fruits and vegetables for student lunches,  provide a “hands-on” experience for the students to learn new agriculture techniques, and be an important revenue stream for NY DINA College.  As a new source of revenue, we've helped ensure the stability of the school’s operations and for an important shift to occur away from the school's founder as the primary source of funding. Through this fund, BBS received donations for the purchase of gardening tools such as shovels and hoes which the school has now acquired. We have now wrapped up the work and the teachers have taken over the gardens continued development along with the students.  A team of local agronomists will continue to play a role by acting as a resource to share best practices in water management, crop rotation, etc.

In July, BBS shipped much needed teacher resource workbooks to Sserinya Primary School in Uganda.  The resource books are for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and grade one teachers and provide a range of exercises and activities that will support early education such as sounding out letters, numbers and counting.  The teachers will be able to re-use the materials and resources for future classes. These resources along with English/French dictionaries have arrived in Uganda’s capital. We anticipate they’ll arrive in the village in the next couple of weeks as a postal service truck is only dispatched to this region when they have a full truck of items to deliver. The materials will arrive in ample time for the teachers to review and plan lessons for the upcoming autumn term. This fund supported the purchase of the resources and when the shipment arrives the headmaster will take photos for us to share with everyone via a short update and on our social media platforms.

The other update we wish to provide is from the Thai Child Development Foundation (TCDF) and their on-going need for oxygen tanks for the children that need extensive physical therapy. TCDF’s school and medical support program is closed because of the current COVID wave the country is experiencing.  The lockdown it is anticipated to last until the beginning of September and it is the hope of TCDF that they’ll be able to welcome the children back in the autumn and resume their school operations. When they reopen, the team there will send new photos for us to share. 

This week, BBS updated the project page for this fund to reflect some new priorities that organisations are in need of support to receive.  This includes: 

1. Funding internet costs at the Heart of Asia Society.  This Kabul based think tank is involved in the peace building process in Afghanistan.  They currently have several projects running which have operational costs and if we can support their internet costs this will free up their resources at a critical time.
2. Teachers’ salaries at Sserinya  Primary School.  The current lockdown in Uganda has meant a cutback of government funding and as a result there is an ask for help to pay for teacher salaries, which equates in US dollars to 65.00 a month.
3. Mobility for Africa continues to expand their work to more rural e-mobility sites in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.  Their focus right now is on continuing to develop their lithium battery technology.

Moving forward, we will continue to update this project page to reflect new needs from a diverse range of projects that we support and may be of interest to individuals. The other benefit of our update strategy is that we believe this is a great way to build awareness for impactful work being done on a grassroots level through some very difficult times.

We wish to extend our deepest thanks to everyone that has supported this fund and we look forward to sharing with all of you what's next!