Dear mentors and supporters,

It has been a while since we have last shared updates with you, and there is a lot to share. We have been very busy!

Our mentees’ parents and guardians will soon be harvesting crops for the first season. They rely 100% on their crops for subsistence, so this is a very important time. Part of their harvest this year will include the maize/corn, sesame, and sunflowers donated to them by our visiting mentors and supporters. We will share photos with you within the next two weeks.

As their parents prepare to harvest, our girls are preparing for the end of the second school term. Between August 2 and 16, the girls will be leaving school for their second-term holidays. They will be reporting back to school on September 2 for their third and final term of the year, leading to promotion to the next class.

We have 15 students finishing their high school educations this year, looking into joining tertiary institutions in 2015. This is a hugely meaningful transition for these young adults, none of whom initially thought it would be possible to reach this point in their educations due to lack of support from their own families. Thank you so much to all of you who have committed to supporting these girls in school and supporting PCE and RGCM. Without your support these girls would never have had a chance to attend a secondary institution. Thanks to you, our community continues to become increasingly knowledgeable and empowered.

We are proud to inform you that all the 37 girls currently still seeking sponsorship and mentorship opportunities (http://pce-foundation.org/rgcm-applicants) under the Rural Girl Child Mentorship (RGCM) project have been funded for the last two terms. We received donations from individuals from across the globe to support the girls’ continued enrollment in school during this time. Your generosity has not only given them enormous opportunity but also saved them from the pressures of early marriage, the influence of “sugar daddies,” and negative interactions with peers in their respective villages. The girls recognize the value of the education they are receiving. Andera Franciska, 17, was chased out of her home by her father, who insisted that she must marry. She says that she knows she is very fortunate to have had the opportunity to become educated. “I don’t agree with my father; marriage is a waste of time and [so is] life without education. I am so lucky to be in school.”

We are still looking for mentors or sponsorship for these 37 girls and we welcome donations to cover their school fees for this coming third term (September – December) and following years. If you know of anyone who would be interested in supporting any of these girls, please forward our contact information to them. Most of these girls are orphans due to HIV/AIDS; they are living with their elderly grandparents, with other relatives, or on their own. They will not be able to persist in school without continued support.

We would like to inform current mentors that Skype calls with the girls are increasingly possible thanks to improvements in local access to technology. During the school visitations this term and the recent first term holidays, several mentors were able to Skype with their mentees. This has been very exciting for them and for us! We welcome and encourage Skype calls, so please do not hesitate to make appointments with us whenever possible. Thank you to everyone who has communicated with their mentees this term, whether by Skype or by letters. They really appreciate it!

In other exciting news, we were recently selected by Ideo and UK Aid to receive funding for a project designed to provide programming to at-risk girls during school holidays. For more information, please see https://openideo.com/challenge/womens-safety/evaluation/holiday-mentorin… . Our goal is to create a series of structured life-skills camps to be held during school holiday breaks in Kampala and Tororo. The camps will help 170 girls of of the urban slums of Namwongo and the rural districts of Tororo and Buteleja (where we currently operate) avoid exploitation, build self-confidence, and explore their dreams for the future. We are already looking for local and international volunteers, partners, trainers and mentors who could provide these girls with life skills and entrepreneurship/leadership training during this Holiday Camp project, which kicks off this October. Our first camps are scheduled for December 2014- January 2015, April –May 2015, August – September 2015, and December 2015 -January 2016.

We also take this opportunity to acknowledge the many wonderful visitors who have spent time with us and our projects during these last few years. These include researchers, trainers, volunteers, mentors and visitors. 16 visitors (3 locals and 13 international visitors) have already visited with us in the first half of 2014. In total, 33 international visitors and 16 national visitors have spent time at our project sites since 2012. The community we support is always delighted to host visitors, and we are grateful for the knowledge and skills they bring.

If you are not yet following us on Facebook, please “like” our pages to stay current with updates and photos. https://www.facebook.com/RGCMUganda
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pearl-Community-Empowerment-PCE-Foundatio…. 

Also be sure to check out our recently updated website at http://pce-foundation.org/. If you’ve ever wondered which countries our many international mentors call home, take a look at our new mentor location map at http://pce-foundation.org/become-rgcm-mentor/!

Please contact us if you are interested in supporting any of the initiatives above or have ideas for new or better ways to implement our projects.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Kind regards,
Beatrice Achieng Nas