Application Form
If you have a UK bank account the easiest way for us to receive your payment is for you to set up a monthly or yearly standing order, direct to our Uganda Lodge bank account, not forgetting to add the childs school number and your surname as a reference. Your standing order can easily be set up through your online or telephone banking system or by visiting your local branch.
When you have filled in your application form and are ready to begin sponsoring, please send an email to ann@ugandalodge.com to check that your chosen child is still available and we will transfer him/her to the “Waiting for Fees” category for a few days until the money comes through to our bank. You have to set payments up yourself as its its a Standing Order and not a Direct Debit. If you are eligible we can claim UK Gift Aid through our parent charity ”Let Them Help Themselves out of Poverty” Reg 1127387 
If you do not run a UK bank account, you can send us a personal cheque in your own currency – if its value is under £50, then no transfer fees are payable by us; alternatively you can donate a year’s fee online at http://www.mycharitypage.com/ruhangadevelopmentschool but please add a reference of sponsorship with your name plus childrens numbers. Again you can email me back the application form.
The system we operate at the school is that every new child who joins pays a one-off 40,000 ugx registration fee (about £12) and then he/she gets a school number and can always attend Ruhanga Development school for free – with no further tuition fees to pay – regardless of whether they actually have a named sponsor or if their specific sponsor has stopped payments. Each child gets a full days schooling, a free breakfast, all text books, sports, games and craft equipment supplied, a free uniform generously donated from UK schools. If there are enough volunteers staying at the Lodge, then activities are often organised during the holidays.
To help prevent parents thinking that these “white foreigners” will provide every single thing for their children, members of the PTA decided each child should pay 2,000 ugx (50p) every term for exams and 1,000 ugx to be put into a medical fund – so a sick child can be taken to see a doctor or a nurse and given some treatment if needed. Each child is asked to provide half a dozen exercise books and three toilet rolls per term. The PTA will look at cases of extreme hardship and we have stopped any children being sent home or excluded from school because of non-payments.
Our children are day students from nearby villages, and not boarders. It happens that from time to time that some children do not attend school but we are not always made aware of this back in the UK. Reasons vary – families may split up or parents and guardians become sick themselves and the children are sent away to other relatives in a distant part of Uganda – this can be for just a few months, and we always take these children back without a new registration fee, when they return to the village.
Please understand that this can occasionally mean that the child shown against your name is not actually at the school on a specific date. However, you can be assured that all your money goes directly out to the school in Uganda and Denis and the PTA oversees the week-to-week running expenses of the school. Any cash left over goes towards upgrades and new build of classrooms and other facilities.
We have no paid staff to run this sponsorship scheme either here in the UK or in Uganda so all the admin is done by volunteers and the local teachers themselves.
To avoid jealousy and other previously experienced problems, we try our hardest to be totally fair to ALL our children and discourage the giving of individual presents (or even letters) by sponsors and volunteers alike; at Christmas EVERY child was given a new pair of plastic sandals plus a non-school sweatshirt – thanks to various donations. Earlier in the year all 250 children had a dental check-up and were given a toothbrush, 250 families had an additional mosquito net, and back in the summer, each of our children were given an item of clothing. The water project has now given most of the children a clean fresh water supply close by their home.
If you would like to send a letter please address it to the whole class rather than a specific child so that it can be read out to all the children. Just say you are supporting their school, and tell them a little about your family and life in your country. You can send it as an attachment to ugandalodge@yahoo.co.uk a nd ask AMON to pass it on to the teachers. If you add photos or pictures please make sure they are small in size because the internet connection in Ruhanga is very slow. We will soon start a special facebook page dedicated to the school to help make communication easier.
I hope this information gives clarification about how we run our ”SponsorA Child” scheme and also explains how just £3.50 per month can actually make a difference – especially when compared to the sponsoring costs of some of the larger charities.
Please fill in the downloadable application form above and post or email it back to ann@ugandalodge.com