In 2005 an unsolicited donation of £5000 was given to a registered charity in Uganda, the Namugongo Fund for Special Children (NFSC), which exists to support orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS and their extended family carers. This support helps to build the capacity of extended families to look after the children of their deceased relatives, thereby helping to keep children in their communities and prevent them from needing to be sent away to an orphanage.
The funds were collected from guests at celebration for a civil partnership in lieu of presents. The funds were used by NFSC to increase the number of breakfast feeding centres for school-aged children from 3 to 5, thereby enabling an additional 220 children to have a basic but nutritious breakfast before they go to school.
Following a visit to the project a year later in October 2006, the original donors decided that they had a responsibility to support the two new breakfast feeding centres to ensure their sustainability. A further £17,500 was sent out between November 2006 and December 2008.
Since 2006, other friends and colleagues of the original donors have been to visit the project and have reported favourably on their work. We see these visits as opportunities for ‘friend-raising’ as well as fundraising.
To keep up the commitment to the families in Namugongo, a registered charity was set up in June 2009. We hope this will continue to sustain this initiative and enable a wider group of interested parties to support the project by raising funds and offering other forms of in-kind support (such as volunteering). The Trust has been registered with the Office of the Scottish Charity Register (OSCR) – Scottish charity number SC040564.
