One of the other basic necessities of life is having a proper roof over your head. For many people in Uganda this is not a matter of course. Often the roof over their heads is in a very bad condition, during heavy rains the roofs leak and the badly constructed walls collapse. That’s the reason why the Joanne Foundation has regularly reacted positively to requests for financial help for building projects.
During the last few years the following building projects have been realised:
With his family our coordinator Apollo lived in a small house consisting of two very small rooms. Because of the fact that Apollo’s house is the centre of all the activities of the Joanne Foundation, we decided to build a larger house for Apollo and his family. A part of this house is used for the activities of Joanne’s Library and Reading Club and Joanne’s Children Corner.
Jane’s house was in a very bad condition and after an earthquake the house almost collapsed and living there was very risky. Regularly Jane takes care of children in her home so the Joanne Foundation decided to build a new and safe house for her.
Jovia is the mother of three children who are also part of our program. She is a very hard worker and hardly ever asks the Joanne Foundation for financial support. She tries to find ways of becoming self supporting and she succeeds in this better than we expected. She runs a small shop, she has a vegetable garden and she breeds pigs. She manages to live on the proceeds of her activities. Because the shop was in her house, her living space was less than 12 square meters. That is why the Joanne Foundation built a new house for her.
Apollo showed us the very bad condition of Polinari’s house, he lives there with his sister and both are very old. The roof consisted of a few pieces of corrugated boards and the walls were made of wooden poles, branches and loam. Termites weakened the wooden poles and rain washed away the loam. In other words, living in this house was absolutely not safe. Thanks to sponsors construction workers could build a safe house for Polinari and his sister.
Old Ssali’s house collapsed due to heavy rain. His neighbours helped him build a temporary house consisting of a few corrugated boards. His family of six people had to share a house of six square meters. Ssali sold part of his land to finance the building of a bigger and safer house, but the proceeds of the sale was not enough to build a new house. The Joanne Foundation gave the Ssali family enough money to finish building their house. Ssali and his family are very happy and grateful to be able to live in a proper and safe house.
Rosemary is the woman who takes care of two disabled girls. She is very poor and finds it hard to make ends meet. She lived in a house weakend by termites and with a leaking roof. The Joanne Foundation decided to build a new house for Rosemary and the two girls, especially because we appreciate her unselfish commitment to both handicapped children.
In Uganda almost every school has a fence round its property for safety reasons. The School for Special Needs in Masaka had no fence and no entry gate. The headmistress, Sarah, told us that she didn’t have the money for a fence and that she was very worried about the safety of her deaf students because often medicin men kidnap children to sacrifice them. In particular deaf children are very vulnerable. The Joanne Foundation has decided to react positively to Sarah’s request and decided to build an entry gate and a solid fence for the safety of the deaf children.
The principal of the Little Stars Junior Academy told us about the very unsafe situation at his school: one of the buildings showed a number of technical defects. During the building of his school not enough cement and too much sand was used resulting in the crumbling down of the walls in classrooms where children were taught. In 2018 we had enough money to help them repair the schoolbuilding and now 600 students receive their lessons in a safe environment.
