Afrinspire has been accepted again to participate in the Big Give Christmas Challenge, the annual opportunity to make one donation and double the impact. Between 28th November and 5th December, donations made to Afrinspire through the Big Give will be doubled from our pot of pledged matched funding from a major pledge and a Big Give Champion.
You'll find more information on how to participate in our next newsletter, but in the meantime, we wanted to tell you about the Functional Adult Literacy project which benefits from Big Give donations.
Our partner Rose Ekitwi grew up illiterate, and now has a passion for teaching adults to read and to be empowered with literacy and other life skills and knowledge, by teaching household management, numeracy and business skills. We have worked with Rose since 2005 to help mainly women but men also. Over 80 groups have been formed in rural areas.
We've been able to start six new groups in 2017, the majority in a new area, Mayenzi in Eastern Uganda. Members come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and whilst groups are often mainly female, one of the Mayenzi groups is predominantly composed of young people who missed out on school due to not having money to pay. They welcome the opportunity to learn valuable skills that they can't get anywhere else.
Such new groups require our support for an initial 'nurturing' period of up to two years, during
which the leaders are trained and support is provided through visits until they are established. Now, we're delighted to see our more mature groups extending their help to start new ones. One inspiring leader of a mature Manafwa group (pictured here, far right, with Rose Ekitwi on his left), is demonstrating how FAL can be self-sustaining in this way: He cycles to the Mayenzi area to facilitate the new groups and share his expertise. Thus initial funding for FAL groups creates a ripple effect, as the trained leaders extend or repeat the process with new group
embers.
