2015-09-09 18.29.09Term 3 at IGF schools has begun well, with students returning after the school holidays eager to learn in the final school term for 2015.

IGF schools have been wonderfully blessed in the past month with textbooks and rice. Huge appreciation goes to Drayton and the team in the United States for the donation of textbooks for the primary schools. IGF is also sincerely grateful for the donation of rice from Lesea Global Feed the Hungry USA.

As this is the final term for 2015, many students are busily preparing for their primary seven leaving exams, which will be held in a few months.  We wish all students well in their studies and exam preparation!

Textbooks

class 1Irene Gleeson Foundation serves over 4,000 children on a daily basis.

We seek to care for the students and their education through providing two meals a day, offering needed health care, granting spiritual counselling, and employing competent teachers. Unfortunately, these activities utilize nearly all of our financial resources and leave little to be spent on needed learning materials like textbooks. In an economy as devastated as Kitgum’s, these resources are already rare and hard to come by – as food and medicine take priority, books are seen as frivolous and too expensive. Children have empty stomachs as well as a hunger for knowledge; their parents can only hope to feed one of these.

Goals of Textbooks include:

  • Increase access to textbooks for students, allowing better comprehension of subjects
  • Provide a varied collection of learning materials available to all in the library
  • Improve our teachers’ ability to educate our students

This year 2,300 textbooks have been delivered and distributed to IGF Primary Schools through additional donations specifically for textbooks.

 

Nutrition

Santo and JoelProviding everyday nutrition to students and staff is a core activity at IGF, and was in the heart of Mama Irene when she first reached Kitgum over 20 years ago. At IGF, all children and staff are provided with two meals each day. This accounts for a large area of expenditure each month (Nutrition accounts for approximately 16% of IGF’s monthly expenditure). We are therefore grateful to additional contributions, such as those from Lesea Global Feed the Hungry USA, who have provided a shipping container of ‘Mana pack rice’. This not only helps us to provide nutrition for more children, but to also provide for these vulnerable children in other ways. Thank you Lesea Global Feed the Hungry USA, for your support and contributions to IGF and the vulnerable children in Northern Uganda.