Staff and students from Ashton Sixth Form College will be flying
out to Uganda on the 9th of February 2012 for 14 days. Staying in Jinja and working closely with the Nile Vocational Institute.

Students that have been selected for the trip come from a range of subject areas including Health and Social Care, A-Level Law, the Citizenship enrichment group, and Media studies. Media students Ross McKnight and James Haggerty will also be filming the trip and creating a DVD of their experience. Joining the students will be College Principal Dr Janet Nevin, Head of Health and Social Care Diane Moffat, A-Level Philosophy and Religious Studies teacher Alison Thomas and A-Level Law teacher Jennifer Rudd.

The staff and students will be involved in a range of Projects including:

Refurbishing classrooms in a primary school near the centre of Jinja.

Staff will be teaching lessons in the Nile Vocational College.

Village outreach work- working in hygiene education.

Macedonian Trust – works in the poorest villages near Jinja, running Saturday activities for children, and also helping children get established in local schools.

There are also on-going relationships with several schools in Jinja. For example, Masese Co. School where several hundred street children are both educated and fed daily is one school we regularly support with such things as material for school uniforms.

In addition to these projects we have on-going involvement with Arise Africa, who work in villages providing medical help, nutrition and child development programmes, and work with orphans, alongside Christian outreach. Also we support Act 4 Africa (using drama to teach about prevention of AIDS).

What we have achieved:

Thanks to the support of students, staff, parents and friends of ASFC we have been able to sponsor two young people- Susan and Mohammed for 3 years education at the Nile Vocational Institute- Jinja, Uganda.

We will also take out over 50 mosquito nets from the Christmas gift to Uganda appeal. This will support the visiting GP in her village health outreach work and will save many lives.

Furthermore we have been able to commit £1000 to help with the Ugandaid village projects which the students and staff will be physically involved in implementing such as building a long-drop latrine for Euphrance Namusoke, a 75 year old widow, who lives alone in a small mud hut but has the very basic need of a toilet. Fundraising for this included a day where students were asked to make a donation to use the toilets at college; ‘spend a penny to spend a penny’!

We are taking lots of medical equipment out to Uganda as well as shoes and clothes for orphaned village children.

How we did it:

5k sponsored Fun Run- £700 raised through a sponsored fun run at Dove Stone Reservoir- over 30 students and staff met on a chilly Saturday morning in November to run and walk the 5k circuit.

Wristbands- yellow wristbands with the inscription ASFC- You can make a difference- NVI over 700 have been sold.

Toilet Appeal- ‘spend a penny to spend a penny’

‘Donate a net for Christmas’ Appeal- students sold over 50 mosquito net gifts-staff, parents and students sponsored a net as a Christmas present for a family in Uganda or staff/students could buy one as a stocking filler for friends/family and receive a card to acknowledge the gift.

Cake Bakes/stalls

Shoe donations for children in the slums.

Paris Marathon/sponsored walks/3 peaks climb

Giant staff Christmas card

And most recently Bag Packing in Tesco’s Oldham and Tesco’s Greenfield which raised over £600

Just Giving site - www.justgiving.com/asfc-ugandaid