Our Vision
The Problem...
Uganda is a country where, besides the long civil-war, also AIDS made a contribution to many deaths. In some parts of the country, one third of the children lost one or both parents to AIDS. This has as a result that Uganda counts many orphans. Traditionally they would be cared for by the relatives but, due to the severity of the problem, most families are already overloaded with orphans and are not eager to add another burden to the already meager resources. In many cases you can find the older children caring for their siblings. The older ones however can be as young as 10 years!
The Goal...
Driven by our Christian conviction, the Heart4Uganda organization would like to help these children. The purpose of the organization is to help as many of these children as possible. We would like to offer them Care, Housing and Education and by doing this get them in touch with a very practical gospel. By this action we would like to show them that our God is a God of love! Summarized we would like to start an Educational Children's Village where these children will live and go to school.
The Way...
The 'Stichting Heart for Uganda' was founded by Cor & Grace Koelewijn. This organization will have the task to promote and raise funds for this objective in Uganda. Meanwhile, in Uganda the implementing organization is being registered under the name 'Heart for the Children' NGO. This organization will purchase the needed land and start with the building of the Children's Village in the Tororo area.
The Means...
The project will be run by local personnel. In practice this may be supplemented by foreign volunteers. It is our intention that the program will eventually become financially self-sustaining. This will be realized by having the school operate commercially like any other private school in Uganda. Students will be charged a reasonable amount of fees in accordance to the standard of the institution. The profit in the case of this school is rather high as we don not have to service a bank-loan as other commercially run schools have to do. Therefore the profits will be used to pay for school fees for orphans. Besides the places given away to orphans by the school, we will also try to recruit sponsors to pay for even more orphans in the school.
The Pioneers...
Cor & Grace Koelewijn are a couple who live in Uganda. They have three children of their own. Cor went to Uganda in 1988 to do charity work. After a few years he met Grace. Together they have built the Namugongo Children's Village with the funding of a Dutch NGO. Cor is the practical implementor while Grace is the educationalist. Together they have clearly received the talents from God to do this work. They now plan to provide the leadership for this Children's Village. All the past experience will be used to make this a successful program.
The Lang term vision...
If all plans work out the way we expected, we will be in the position to have the school pay 10% of the operational funds back to the mother organization who in turn will use this as a starting fund to continue on a next Educational Children's Village in another district.
Our Hope and Expectations...
At the founding of this project, our hoop and expectation is in our God in whom we put our unconditional trust. We expect all from Him and want to give it all back to Him. We pray that He will bless our plans as we use our talents to give glory to Him.