Dear friends and impact makers,

My name is Julius Chirimwami, i live in the USA, Minnesota where i have been resettled 6 months ago from Nakivale refugee settlement Uganda where i lived for 12 years. I was able to found BEST FUTURE CENTRE UGANDA that provides access to education and vocational and entrepreneurship skills to the adults(parents and youths) in order to build a literate and self-sustaining community). this center has been been able to change thousands and thousands of the lives of the refugees in Nakivale camp Uganda. please watch the video to receive more details . Being the USA gives an opportunity to be the voice of the refugees and advocate for them as i can because i know how it feels like to be a refugee.

Nakivale refugee settlement was established in 1958 and officially recognized as a refugee settlement in 1960 through the Uganda Gazette General Notice. Nakivale refugee settlement is the 8th largest refugee camp in the world.

Nakivale refugee settlement, is approximately 200 km away from Kampala, Uganda's capital. It is one of the oldest refugee settlements in the Uganda. It is estimated at well beyond 180 square kilometers. This enormous area is geographically divided into three administrative zones – Base camp, Juru and Rubondo. These three zones, in turn, contain a total of 74 individual villages and 51,132 households.

It currently hosts 171,387 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.[7] Although many refugees in the area have been living there for several years, recent conflicts in nearby countries are increasing the number of arrivals per day. The majority of refugees in the settlement are Congolese although the population is largely heterogeneous with many cultures and groups from different nationalities. The settlement is divided into 79 villages with an average of 800 to 1,000 people per village.

OUR VISION

Our vision is to build a literate and and self-sustaining Nakivale community by giving access to education the children and opportunities to the parents to become self reliant by learning entrepreneurship and vocational skills.

since 2016, we have been able to impact thousands and thousands of lives in Nakivale. including helping children accessing quality education and parents learning different vocational skills and also learning starting their own businesses that help them to generate income to support their families. including (Poultry, permaculture,pigery,sausage making,soap making,tailoring,bakery, selling of water and more.

Challenges: when BFC started, we started we were providing all the services to our fellow refugees for free to make them believe in education. and see that value that it can create in the lives of their children. after being successful on this and having the parents being super excited to have their children in school. we thought about sustainability because our vison is to have BFC last for years and years and support as many refugees as possible to have access to quality education and being self-sustainable. we talked to the parents at school and they were opened to us saying that they love the change their seeing in their children but it is sad because they are not in position to contribute

Due the current situation where by refugee receives less than 5$ a month for food but they mentioned that if they are given opportunity learn different skills they can be able to support the school. And that is when we introduced different programs including vocational skills (Sewing, handcrafts and baking), Permaculture and poultry. we linked all these vocational skills with entrepreneurship which help more than 100 parents to start contributing to center and by now we are able to cover half of the monthly budget and we have 21 staff that are hired at the center.

the current challenge is that we don't have enough space to train because the classes that we normally use for the trainings are being used by the children. and also lack of finances to support their entrepreneurs has brought them to discouragements. they have great business ideas and have prototyped but they lack capital to boost their businesses and being able to generate more income. the more parents are not self-sustaining higher the risk of the center to keep providing services to the community. we have realized that if we want to provide quality services to Nakivale community. parents should feel the responsible for the success of the center. and yes they may feel responsible but how support them to be able to support the center in return.

HOW IS THIS PROJECT GOING TO SUPPORT THE EXISTING EFFORTS

this project aims at providing a safe learning space to the refugees who have already started their small business to scale and generate more income and create more jobs for other refugees. it will also help those who have never started anything and are still struggling to sustain their family to generate concrete business ideas and being able to start. the project will enable us to build a Hub and train the first and second cohorts and each cohort will have 30 people which means 30 businesses will be improved and employ more refugees and other 30 people will be able to start their own small businesses to help them sustain their family needs and supporting the center to keep providing education to the community.

PROJECT

we are looking at using 4,000$ for the trainings and seed and boost capitals.

OUTCOMES

"EVERY ACTION COUNTS"

Any penny donated will go directly to improve the lives of the refugees in Nakivale refugee settlement Uganda. we thank all those that have been supporting all our work since day one and we couldn't be here without your support however we still need your support to do more in Nakivale

" WE ARE BECAUSE YOU ARE" let us join our efforts and build and Self-sustaining refugee community together. and no one should be left behind.