Tuition

I am writing to seek your aid towards my tuition. My name is Stella and I am a graduate student from Uganda.  I have worked with the health sector and microfinance organizations where I served all sorts of households and I saw lives and families transformed.  It was an honor for me to conduct loan orientation mini seminars, basic bookkeeping, importance of savings (very hard for us Ugandans) and build confidence in the women who had to make critical choices on the loan amounts they received.  As some of you may know, most women in the rural areas of Uganda run the households.  They have to make tough decisions whether to feed the families or invest in their businesses.  While I have many stories of women’s lives that were blessed by these programs, three come to mind as successful transformations. One of them had four school aged children, and when her husband disappeared she used our program to get a $10 loan. She bought 6 very small nile perch fish, 8 very tiny little tomatoes and corn mill flour to sell.  She, and her children, lived in one small room that flooded during the rainy seasons. She would stand all night carrying the two younger ones as the two older ones carried their bedding on their heads. She couldn’t raise school fees and her kids stayed home.  She walked at least 8 miles one way to find open markets to sell her little merchandise. I assessed and analyzed her business every few weeks to see how she was doing.  She did not default on her weekly loan repayments. Barbara today has a retail shop and is able to pay school fees for her children.  Two other women sold fried cassava, P. Nuts (we call G.nuts) and popcorn by the roadside. Our city authorities, routinely chase street vendors away or confiscate their ‘merchandise’ because they cannot afford to pay market taxes.  They often lost their capital and were extremely frustrated because they had to repay the loans and feed their families. These young women endured.  Today both of them sell second hand clothes and other food stuffs in a retail market.  When you transform a woman, you transform a household and a community.

I have learned a lot and desire to seek higher education. I applied and was accepted to pursue a higher degree in Business in The Netherlands beginning September 03, 2018 but am unable to raise tuition.  My visa is also expiring and I am unable to extend it.  I believe this graduate training will give me greater exposure to current economic ideologies, build capacity and equip me for enhanced performance in the Ugandan business environment. I have helped individuals in different communities and I have had an opportunity to work with institutions in drafting policy guidelines. I am seeking your support to scale up the differences made in the individual stories above and develop policies that will help enhance the lives of entire communities. This higher education will equip me to benefit my country given the lessons learned from my community involvement.

The funds raised from you will go towards tuition, housing, welfare, air ticket and health cover.  Tuition -> $18,600, Housing $4600, Health Ins. $1,000, Airline tickets – 1,200, food & daily expenses $ 4,500, Ground transportation (taxi) from Brussels Int. Airport to the Univ. -> $128.  I look forward to your support in helping me change lives in Uganda and thank you for choosing to help me.