March 2021 Newsletter
Greetings from Uganda! We have a lot of news to share but wanted to start this update by introducing you to Mumbere Praise from Ibonde Children’s Home. He is 11 years old and in primary six. This is what he shared with us to share with you: “I love to run and to eat food. I thank everyone in Nyayo for looking after us. I wish you a Happy Easter.” I actually remember meeting this little boy on my last visit in January 2020 and can attest to the fact that “he loves to eat food”! Whenever I was in the kitchen at the children’s home, he was in there spending time with the cook and roasting something over the fire. He’s also a pretty good goat herder!
First bit of news is that Gordon is in Uganda currently! We are beginning to see how Gordon’s presence in Uganda is going to really help us communicate better and provide more insight into what our donors are actually helping to do. Below are some pictures of Gordon with the kids from the past couple of weeks!
One thing that we have wanted to do for a while is to provide you with more detail behind the categories of items we are purchasing. Gordon has helped out tremendously here. If you look on page 3 of the March 2021 Monthly Financial Report you can see what kinds of food are bought with the money we allocate for Ibonde's food fund, along with some pictures of said food. We are really excited to take another step in letting you see what we see and will be doing the same for the Jinja Food category and other items we have listed generically. If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us!
We are very thankful for those who donated this month! If you look at March’s financial report there are a few things that we wanted to highlight:
1) This past month, we once more were able to raise $4,950 for the Basic Needs fund but also added an extra $100 for a special Easter treat for the kids! There’s a picture later on in this post with some of our kids with their treats. They look happy because this is truly something special that they don’t get often :)
2) On the financial report you’ll notice that we are currently tracking two new funds with the first being the ALPhotography fund. This fund is actually an independent crowd fundraiser that was started by one of our supporters, Anna Barrera. She does work on the side as a photographer and has decided that she wants money that she’d normally charge for her services to instead be donated to our mission. This past month her campaign raised $425 which was directly applied to buying food for Ibonde and the purchase of those special Easter sodas and candy. We have given her a page on our website that she has created and set up a unique fund within Kindful that tracks all of these transactions separately. We weren’t planning to have people crowd fund on our behalf but it’s neat to see this develop and how it could easily be expanded to others we may come across who have a similar desire.
3) The other new fund you’ll see is called the God fund. We had an incredibly generous donation this past month of $9,000. It was very humbling for us to think that these folks actually trust us with an amount like this. We don’t want to flippantly spend this amount so are setting it aside until we feel led to expend it. We are currently praying for what to allocate it towards and would appreciate your prayers as well. We’re excited to see what God has in store :)
Some of our kids at Ibonde Children’s Home with their sodas and candy on Easter!
Our founders continue to connect with each other each Monday via virtual bible studies to continue to learn about God and Jesus who ultimately have inspired our mission. We are always happy to have new faces join us! Just reach out via our email under our Contact Us page if you’d like to join.
We pray blessings on each of our donors at the beginning of each month and ask to be kept in your prayers as well. Specifically for guidance as we move forward and for Gordon’s transition back to Uganda.
Michael, Gordon, and Hunter
Founders of Nyayo
