Entrepreneurship Program

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CHALLENGE

We work in the communities of Acholi Quarter, Kampala and Danida, Jinja. Both areas are one of the poorest in the region, where many people live on only $1 a day. We realised many of the people living here couldn’t grow their business due to illiteracy, poor time management and a negative outlook regarding business growth. In Acholi Quarter many men and women are working foremost in a stone quarry, which brings them barely enough money to survive and worse, is even dangerous for their health. And in Danida, many people were working long days in nearby factories without having any employment contract. Lasting growth depends on the empowerment of communities through education, skill-building, control of natural resources, and effective interaction with society and their governments. The best way to move forward is to ensure that the families of the children we work with can become self-sustainable.

SOLUTION

The 22STARS Foundation originated as the 22STARS Jewellery business in 2013, as we always believed that making people self-sustainable through entrepreneurship is the best way to end poverty. We co-designed and marketed the women's jewellery on the Western Market. Already back then we used the profits to also focus on growing the local businesses of the women, so that they would become independent from our selling techniques.Hence when we established the 22STARS Foundation in 2017, it was for us a natural step to focus besides the Child-Sponsorship program also on the Economic Development of the parents of the sponsored children. We at first partnered up with Entrepreneurs Hands Uganda (EHU), to give Entrepreneurship training to the parents and caretakers, mostly women, of the 22STARS sponsored children. Every new member of our Entrepreneurship Program received an intensive four-week training from EHU, then they created in-depth personal profiles for each participant to see how to help them the most. By providing microloans, setting up a saving system, and monitoring ongoing progress these people were able to start small business such asfood stalls, hospitality, clothing (tailoring and thrift stores), and local transport (mototaxi).

In 2022 we have decided to change this formula, in order for our community to be self-sustainable, and we created a local committee, formed by some of the beneficiaries of our program. The committee is in charge of disbursing and recollecting the loans, monitoring the progress of our members, and making sure that the loans are paid back and are restributed within the community. The loans are issued every 6 months and are paid back on a monthly basis by our benficiaries.

GOAL

Our goal is helping our local committee to have access to more fund to be able to enlarge our impact within our communities. Availability of small, but repeated loans is, in the long-term, expected to positively impact the lives of our beneficiaries. In order to keep our Entrepreneurship Program running, be able to hand out larger loans and add new beneficiaries to the program for this year 2023 we are looking into raising €5.000.

Health Program

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CHALLENGE

Health care is expensive, especially in the communities 22STARS operates in that are struck by poverty. As a developing country, Uganda struggles with multiple intractable diseases that kill millions of Ugandans every year. HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, espiratory tract infections, and diarrheal diseases are among the top five causes of death in Uganda. Additionally, many children have no access to eye health care, which causes them to drop out of school due to bad vision. Especially in Acholi Quarter eye health care has been a huge problem, as many children are crashing stones in the quarry. Not only do stones fly into the eyes of the children, leaving them blind for the rest of their lives, also the dust and lack of clean water to wash their eyes causes many eye infections. Uganda has a scarcity of trained eye care professionals available to provide accessible care, this is particularly evident in optometry services which impact on an adult’s capacity to earn and a child’s capacity to learn. Early eye examinations are crucial to make sure children have normal, healthy vision so they can participate better at school and in play.

SOLUTION

With our Health Program we pay for the medical bills for children, whose situation is life threatening, and whose parents are not able to pay for it. We believe strongly that malaria should not be the reason anymore for a child to die. Whenever we bring children to a hospital, we usually also bring their parent or caretaker along, pay for transportation and also meals during the day, since a hospital visit can take easily take up to 10 hours. As a subcategory of our Health Care Program, is our Eye-healthcare Program, which we launched thanks to a partnership with WirHelfenSehen E.v, who visited us in 2018. Within our Eye-care program we have been able to send two students to an Optician School to become Optometrists. Several times a year, we take children and their families to the eye hospitals and opticians to get their eyesight checked and get medication, or glasses where needed. We even were able to pay for the operation of several children and young people who had a damaged eye due to the stone quarry work. Additionally, we are spreading awareness about blindness prevention and conduct eye health education programs in the local communities.

GOAL

Within the Eye-care Program we are planning that our recent graduates from the Optician school will help conduct eye testing in the communities we work in and expand to other communities. We have 459 sponsored children now, where possible their parents or care takers also pay for medical costs. However often the costs are too high for the parents and hence we need to help out. Whenever an operation of a child is very expensive, we set up a specific emergency fundraiser for the child. As the money raised for our Health Program is supposed to cover the basic medical needs of all our sponsored children. Our goal is to raise each month €250,-. That is €3.000,- a year, so that we can take care of the basic health care needs of the children.

Music Program

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CHALLENGE

Within the communities we work, music has traditionally been considered essential for educating, communicating, and imparting discipline to the younger generation. However, access to music instruments is extremely limited because instruments are very costly and there is no music school or center close by. Parents and elders have played the role of instructors, transferring the skills to children through riddles, storytelling, myths, traditional dance, playing local instruments and proverbs. The communities believe that these artistic skills prepare children for adult life. What the communities lack is a center where music and dance can take place.

SOLUTION

Especially our project leaders in Jinja, David and Aidah, stressed for the importance of having a music program. Hence 22STARS took it upon themselves to fill the gaps in knowledge provided by the public school system to enable our kids to receive music and dance classes within our community centers. In April 2021 we set up our music program andbought our first musical instruments: bass guitar, bow harp, solo guitar, classic guitar, acoustic guitar, drum set, keyboard, micro phones, and speakers. We had a music trainer from the USA, Alex Valencia, who helped us for a couple of months to set up the music classes with our local teachers. Besides learning new skills, the music classes also help the children with stress and kept them motivated. We enrolled three Ugandan music teachers to start teaching the first four groups of 20 children intensively. Additionally, we have groups of 40 children who participate in our dance and music note classes and had already the possibility to get already familiar with some of the instruments. We offer music classes every day of the week, from 2PM to 4PM.

GOAL

The program has been running smoothly since its inception and we are seeing a great improvement in our children. We are now seeking further support to cover our recurring costs. We pay for our three music teachers, exercise materials and the maintenance of the instruments, for this we need €250,- a month, which is €3.000,- a year. With extra donations we would love to expand our program bits by bits to Kampala.

Local Leadership Program

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CHALLENGE

Our Leadership Program is divided over to projects: one is our Young Leadership Project for our promising teenangers during their holidays. The other one is for our staff and team on the ground. The prorgam is about revealing & developing leadership skills that are already present and to use them together with each other as a team. Growing into Leadership has a lot to do with daring to make mistakes, leaving your comfort zone and entering the growth zone. Everybody is a leader. If we only would know how to use our talents.
Most of us grow up with the idea that leaders are very special people beyond our reach and that it's very difficult to ‘become a leader’. But everyone IS a leader. The essence is to discover what your own leadership qualities are and how to use them. Only then our team in Uganda can become more independent and leading the programs on the ground fully effective .
 

SOLUTION

Our Leadership Program is divided over to projects: one is our Young Leadership Project (YLP) for our promising teenangers during their holidays. The other one is our Leadership & Capacity Building Workshops (CBW) for our staff and team on the ground. This program is about revealing & developing leadership skills that are already present and to use them together with each other as a team. Growing into Leadership has a lot to do with daring to make mistakes, leaving your comfort zone and entering the growth zone. Everybody is a leader. If we only would know how to use our talents. Most of us grow up with the idea that leaders are very special people beyond our reach and that it's very difficult to ‘become a leader’. But everyone is a leader. The essence is to discover what your own leadership qualities are and how to use them. Only then our team in Uganda can become more independent and leading the programs on the ground fully effective.  

GOAL

The program has been running smoothly since its inception and we are seeing a great improvement in our team on the ground. We are now seeking further support to cover our cost for future trainings. In the holidays - three times a year - we like to give a Young Leadership Training to a group of 10 promising teenagers. This costs around 3500 euro per year. Additionally we are organising throughout the year workshops with our local team members to strengthen their leadership skills, communications, structures, reporting and proposal writing. We come together 4 months a year with the full team (Kampala and Jinja) once a week for two days. Costs include workshop material, accommodation, food, transport and facilitator reimbursement. This comes down to 5000 euro a year. We work together with our Dutch freelance consultant Joelle Verkooijen. Additionally Jennifer Dietz who is originally from Germany lives now in Uganda and is volunteering once a week at our project to help our local team with internal communications. The future of the program is a train-the-trainer structure; when this program appears to be successful, these participants can function not only as role models, but also can hand-over their learnings to the next group, and support the new participants in running the projects. This will have a snowball effect where more and more people will learn about the skills and approach of unlocking leadership. Total costs per year: 8500 euro.