One of the challenges faced by families of our school children is the ever-increasing cost of rent in Namatala – and it’s forcing some of our children to drop out of school and move away. But thanks to a generous grant, this new project will provide affordable homes for the families involved.

Our IGA programme has been a huge benefit to many parents and enabled them to cope with the constant increases in costs of living. However, some of our children are looked after by elderly grandmothers (and even great-grandmothers!) who find it very difficult to work. In the UK, such elderly women would be receiving benefits. Here, however, there is no help at all.

Many of these elderly women feel that they have no choice now but to go back and live in their rural villages. This would mean that, if they wanted their children to remain at the school, then Child of Hope would have to try and find foster families for their children or, alternatively, bring the children into our Children’s Home. Of course, this means separating the family, which is something that we really want to avoid.

So, we have bought some land and have started to build some basic accommodation, which we will rent to ten small families at an extremely reasonable. This will enable the families to stay together and the children to remain at home with their other family members, with one of the families employed as caretaker of the plot.

Building work began last week of ten rooms, two pit latrines, and three bathrooms, being constructed using metal poles as columns, local bricks and mud, cement plastering of walls and floor, and timber and iron sheets. Each room will be 12 feet by 8 feet in size.