Before we started working with the Ibwera community, women and children had to walk up to 10km, often through hilly terrain, to gather water that wasn’t even safe to drink.

Together, we've constructed rainwater tanks and safe toilets in schools, so students can stay clean and hydrated and have more time to learn and play - and no longer need to go on long journeys to collect unsafe water.

You’ve helped to increase the number of households with easy access to clean, safe water by 35% since 2009.

Before we started working with the Ibwera community, school buildings were run-down, classrooms were hot and congested, and there were very few clean water sources, toilets, desks and other essentials in schools.

Then we put your donations to work, and together, we have built 16 new classrooms and equipped schools with 675 desks, 65 safe toilets, 30 clean water tanks and 14 playgrounds.

Now more children are attending school; there are more trained teachers, textbooks, and netball and football equipment in schools.

Over 90% of the Ibwera community relies on agriculture and livestock for food and income. Unreliable rainfall, a lack of crop diversity and a lack of access to credit had made it tough for families to produce enough to feed their children and earn an income.

Many children went to sleep hungry and their parents couldn’t afford to send them to school.

Only 17.4% of people in Ibwera can access a bank to save or apply for credit, so the locally-managed savings groups we have helped set up are a vital lifeline.

Children and pregnant women had to walk up to 15km in search of vital healthcare, because of the lack of healthcare staff and clinics.   

Today, far more children are being vaccinated, and antenatal care staff are visiting more pregnant women.

Together, with your support, we have trained parents on how to feed their children nutritious food so they can grow up healthy and strong. And children are protected from malaria by insecticide-treated mosquito nets while they sleep.

Your kind support helped form and train Child Protection Committees in schools and in the community. Children and adults now use them to report child abuse and raise awareness of risks to children’s safety.

When children were affected by violence, child marriage, early pregnancy and other forms of abuse, people didn’t know how to report it and what power they had to stop it.

Your generosity also helped children in Ibwera to gain birth certificates. Without these, children can be denied education and healthcare, and become easy targets for human traffickers and underage recruitment into the armed forces. It’s also much easier to force a girl into child marriage if she can’t confirm her age with her birth certificate.