Sponsor Orphans at the Good Hope School Uganda

Your Powerful Impact for Less than $1 a Day

$0.95 cents per day ($345/year) will can feed, educate and house a child in need while providing life in a safe and supportive community versus despair and destitution on the streets.

Scroll Down for details on the school fees and how to sponsor a child through this grass-roots project.

The Good Hope School Story

The Good Hope School is a special community school and orphanage located in a poor rural district of Southwestern Uganda. It was established by a young school teacher, and our friend, Innocent Tumuheki on his family’s land around 2007, with the support of the Peace Peddlers Foundation, headed by adventurer and entrepreneur Jamie Bianchini. Innocent’s vision was to provide accessible and affordable education to the children of the district and a loving home for local orphaned children whose parents had died (generally from AIDS).

The school offers Kindergarten - 7th Grade education and is a government-licensed primary school and registered non-profit charitable organization in Uganda. They employ 10 teachers and 5 support staff, including a live-in matron and patron for the children's full-time care. There are currently 140 children enrolled, of which around half are orphaned or extremely needy and living at the school either full or part-time.

A small International Advisory Group of volunteers from the USA and Australia, who have all personally spent time at the school over the years, work together to provide mentoring support to Innocent and his team, and to help fundraise for school maintenance and upgrade projects.

Orphan Sponsorship Program

In June 2020 the International Advisory Group commenced a project with Innocent to establish a project plan, budget and governance for a sponsorship initiative to connect fully and partially orphaned children with international sponsors. The aim was to financially provide for the orphans independently from the school’s stretched operating budget.

Support with Purpose

Our main goal with the sponsorships is for each of the children to know they have a family or person out there in the world who is supporting them from afar and celebrating their accomplishments. Sponsorships give the kids and community hope. These children have been dealt a very tough hand in life and shouldn’t have to carry the additional anxiety of worrying that they’ll be turned out onto the streets or feel that they are a burden to the school or their community.

Summary of 2022 and 2023 projects and accomplishments

If you'd like to see some short videos that summarize the school and sponsor program accomplishments over the past 2 years then please check out the following 2022 & 2023 Highlights videos:

2023

2022

Children In Need of Sponsors

In 2023, we supported 11 orphaned children by pooling one-off contributions from generous donors who preferred not to commit to an ongoing sponsorship arrangement. This was a wonderful gift for those kids, but we are now urgently trying to keep these same children funded. These kids will be devastated if they can’t keep going to school and we fear they may end up facing some potentially terrible fates if they get turned away.

The 11 that we most urgently need to find sponsors for are:

How Sponsorship Works

Your $0.95 cents per day sponsorship covers the child's food, clothing, bedding, accommodations, personal and school supplies, medical needs, and school fees.

All money contributed goes directly to the school for the exclusive benefit of the children. There are no paid program administrators or third parties involved. Information on the School’s Board of Trustees and International Advisory Group are available on request and included in the Sponsor Welcome Pack.

Sharing a Sponsorship

Sharing a sponsorship between 2 or more people/families is also an option. If you have a friend or family member that you can share with then that'd be great, just let us know and we can loop them into the updates. Or, if you need help being paired up with another party then please let us know.

2024 Fees

The 2023 fees are USD$115 per term ($345 for the year)... that's $0.95 per day to keep a child fed, housed, educated, and safe in their loving community. This can be paid in full upfront (preferred for administration purposes) or by term in instalments as follows:

• Term 1 (Jan-April) – USD$115 by February 1st

• Term 2 (May-Aug) – USD$115 by May 1st

• Term 3 (Sept-Dec) – USD$115 by September 1st

2-Year Commitment

We ask that you please commit to sponsoring a child for a 2-year minimum since they will be dependent on your generosity to maintain them. If you need to end your support at any time please just give us as much notice as possible so we can try to pair the child up with a new sponsor to minimise impacts on them.

NEXT STEPS - HOW TO SPONSOR A CHILD

1) Please select which child (or children) you’d like to sponsor from the profiles above.

2) Click the 'Donate Now' button and enter the amount you can give at this time (i.e. $345 per child per year or $115 per term per child), followed by your payment method. Use the slider function to reduce or remove the GoFundMe ‘tip’ (this $ goes to the website, not the school).

3) The GoFundMe platform will email you a payment receipt.

4) Hal will send you a follow-up 'thank you' message via the GoFundMe platform. Unfortunately we have no way to communicate directly with donors via GoFundMe, so in the 'thank you message' we will ask you to send us an email indicating which child/children you would like to sponsor. We will then update the sponsorship records and send you a confirmation email.

5) This GoFundMe page will remain live throughout 2024 for donations and for sponsors that need to make payments on a term-by-term basis. The sponsorship coordinators will send reminders to those sponsors ahead of each term.

Hal's contact details are provided below if you have any questions.

Communicating with the Kids

Our preferred methods for communicating with the children are through WhatsApp and email. Messages are received and shared with the kids by the School’s Director, Innocent Tumuheki, and the school's Social Worker, Jennifer Kyarikunda (one of the earliest orphan graduates from the school who is now completing a Social Work Degree at the local Kabale University!).

Short WhatsApp videos are a great way for you to show the kids the environment around where you live, your family, your pets, etc! They love receiving messages of encouragement or even simple greetings and check-ins like asking them “How was your day?” You can also write letters and then take a picture of them to send by email or WhatsApp.

Examples of sponsors' pictures/videos sent to their children

Other Ways To Help

Can't sponsor but want to help...

If you aren't able to sponsor a child at this time but would like to donate towards the cause then any amount would be greatly appreciated.

Spread the word

Please use the 'share campaign' feature (or directly share the link) with your friends or family and encourage them to consider supporting a child.

If you’d like to check out some other pictures of the school and the joyful kids then please check out (and click 'like') on the school’s Facebook Page:

Good Hope School Uganda Facebook

Thank you for your time, interest and consideration of support for the Good Hope School and these special kids who desperately need your help!

May your year ahead be full of blessings, happiness and good health!

Yours in service

Hal Dobbins and Jeanne Howell

Sponsorship Coordinators

[email redacted] - phone: +61438141032 (Hal - Australia)

[email redacted] - phone: +18587618500 (Jeanne - USA)

Video about How the School Started

This video (made in around 2014) tells the full story of the school's inception and is inspirational if you have the time and interest: