Dear Supporters and Friends,

We hope you had a wonderful season of Thanksgiving with your families and friends. Much as I am addressing this to our American friends and supporters, I believe it is a season felt entirely around the world; to get together with families.

This month comes with lots of exciting accomplishments and projects. We are overly grateful to you, our generous supporters, and to the team working behind the scenes to accomplish the tasks and projects.

We received funding from Benjamin Richter for the purchase of land for the construction of Titan Schools of East Africa. This funding was meant to purchase a home adjacent to the current Titan school in Buwenda village, Jinja, to build more classrooms while the learners use the current bungalow house as classrooms for the kindergarten. It happened however that cheaper land was on sale in Kibibi village, Jinja – a 10-minute drive from Titan Buwenda. So we went ahead and purchased 3 acres of land at Kibibi for a fresh start of kindergarten and primary school. Kibibi community does not have a school, Titan will be the first school in this village. Additionally, Kibibi has potential for the expansion of Titan to secondary/High school too. The community is willing to sell land for education development in the area. We are very grateful to Benjamin for the generous support he gave to us to create a space and environment for education, learning, transformation and a space for breaking the circles of poverty.

We are also working on the Educational Support and Community Empowerment in East Africa project funded by Myriad Canada. This project is focused on a number of initiatives. It aims to sponsor 173 students in Portland schools, Amor village, comprising 75 students in Portland high School and 98 in Portland Nursery and Primary School, with a total of 92 girls (53.2%) and 81 boys (46.8%). It will cover the procurement of essential equipment, including a printer and stationery, for use in Portland and Titan schools to support administrative functions and learning. It will provide training for 77 staff members, including both teaching and non-teaching staff from Portland and Titan schools, which will focus on enhancing skills in classroom management, work ethics, leadership, team building, and crisis management to improve overall education quality. External trainers will conduct the sessions during school holidays. Non-teaching staff involved in the training include the school’s finance team (bursar and finance manager), administrators (operations and secretary), store manager, nurse, security personnel, cooks, and cleaners. A meal program for 401 students across both Portland and Titan schools will be implemented, ensuring that students are well-nourished and better able to focus on their studies. Promotion of co-curricular activities, including sports, athletics, music, dance, and drama, to enrich students’ development and engagement will run from September 2024 to February 2025. Lastly, the project will cover necessary maintenance and upgrades, including the repair of the school bus and the purchase of an administrative laptop and internet access to improve operational efficiency and learning resources. We are very grateful to Myriad Canada and donors, Brian Scudamore, Marcus & Yvonne New and Stephen Kearley for their support. We have already begun the implementation of the project. The sponsorship of 173 students in Portland schools, Amor village; the feeding program for 401 students across both Portland and Titan schools; procurement of essential equipment, including a printer and stationery; maintenance and upgrades, including the repair of the school bus and the purchase of an administrative laptop and internet access to improve operational efficiency and learning resources are all underway. The beneficiaries of this project and the schools’ community are very appreciative. We, the PCEF team, are extremely grateful for your support. We have had many sleepless nights since the inception of PCEF in 2011 because of the financial struggles to accomplish these projects and look forward to all that can now be accomplished.

In the Month of November, Portland schools had a series of national examinations and internal examinations. Thirty-four Primary Seven pupils successfully sat for their Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE), a national exam that will promote them to secondary school at Portland High school. Twenty-three high school students successfully sat for the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) and eleven students sat for the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) – national exams that promote students to join colleges and universities. We are very grateful to all the individual child sponsors, our GOT sponsors and Myriad Canada for enabling these young people to accomplish these levels of education. Many vulnerable young people drop out of school before reaching these levels because of lack of support required to facilitate their continued education. We also had promotional examinations for the continuing pupils and students; out of 333 who sat for promotional assessments, only 8 of them were advised to repeat their current classes of 2024 next year. We also had 19 children (ages 7-9) graduate from kindergarten to primary school level at Portland Nursery school. They were full of joy as they celebrated their special day.

Friends and our supporters, as we move into expanding our educational services at grassroots communities, we call upon you to continue to walk this journey with us. We have some major projects to accomplish in 2025. These include building Titan nursery and primary school in Kibibi village classrooms, dormitories, staff accommodation, solar power installation, water source), renovating Titan Buwenda kindergarten into standard classrooms; building toilet stances for Portland primary school section; building a new ground floor and first floor classroom section of the high school with ramps for easy access for people with disabilities; building dormitories for both boys and girls at Portland primary school section, staff accommodation for Portland for high school and an eco-friendly kitchen for Portland schools. All these projects need a community of people willing to make long lasting impacts in the lives of millions of children while creating a new wave of leaders who will make this world a better place for many more. We need you in this journey in every possible way.

We continue to appeal for funding for Christmas clothes, shoes and bedding for the most vulnerable and needy families; especially for children. For the past 9 years we have purchased and distributed these things to extremely poor and needy children and families in remote villages. This tradition has been greatly appreciated by the recipients who never expected these gifts. In rural communities, most people wear new clothes and or shoes during the Christmas festive season. We are appealing to you to help us reach out to a minimum of 500 children this festive season, a more achievable goal as opposed to the 1000 we had suggested in our October newsletter. We can purchase 3 bales of clothes and 3 bales of shoes for the children. Each bale of clothes is USD $205.47 and each bale of shoes is $167.12. Each bale contains roughly 170 pcs. We are grateful for the donation of $400 from Shelby Young and an equivalent of USD $464 from Natalie Gned Mac from Australia towards this cause. Shelby Young’s donation with a little top-up, helped us acquire two bales of cloths for children this festive season and Natalie’s donation with a little top-up, helped us acquire 3 bales of shoes.

January will soon be here when we host our annual Children’s party, a tradition which has been on-going for 9 years. We prepare food for 400 – 1000 children and provide entertainment, candies, balloons and cheerful games for them. This has been a special event as children are always left hungry and or are sent away to “adult parties”. We make January (the dry and hard month) a special month for them. We would like to host 500 children in Buwenda village and 500 children in Amor on January 12 and January 19 respectively. This project will cost USD $5,479.45 for both communities.

We are extremely grateful for your continued support and we look forward to sharing more news with you this December. As we approach the festive season we call upon you to send your positive thoughts and prayers to the sick and weary, the needy and the helpless. They would like to have a share of better living and your prayers and positive energies can make a difference in their lives.

We thought it would be great for you to see more pictures of the activities of the month of November and what we are currently implementing. Due to the busyness of festive season, I encourage you to keep a look out for photos and more photos throughout this season in our November and December 2024 album on Google Drive.

Your feedback is important to us, we would love to hear from you.

Happy Festive season!