The MTN Uganda Foundation on Thursday donated towards the support of educational initiatives carried out by SOS Children’s Villages in Fort Portal, Kabarole District. The schools that will benefit from the donations by the MTN Uganda Foundation courtesy of SOS Children’s Villages are Butebe Primary School, Kazingo Primary School, Kazingo SDA Primary School, Kiguma Primary School and Kahinju Primary School.
The donation by MTN Uganda Foundation is part of the support given to SOS Children Villages in twenty (20) schools across Uganda that are located in Gulu, Kakiri town, Fort Portal town, and Entebbe, valued at Shs325.4m.
According to Lillian Mpabulungi Ssengooba, SOS Children’s Villages National Program Development Advisor, the support MTN has provided comes at a time when external funding for SOS projects has been reducing.
“We’d like to thank the MTN Foundation for their kind gesture. Their input towards supporting our work is highly motivating because what we do greatly contributes to the national development goals of the country,” she said.
The donations have been split into food (provision of maize meal and beans for lunch), scholastic materials (mathematical sets, pens and pencils), a special girl kit (consisting of four reusable sanitary pads, one piece of soap and one pair of underwear), text books (specially dedicated for students in P5 to P7) and school uniforms.
Justina Ntabgoba, Senior Manager, Corporate Affairs, MTN Uganda stated that they hope that the food and scholastic materials donated will improve school attendance and ultimately make a difference to the lives of the school children;
“As MTN Foundation we believe that this is an investment for the future; the children of Uganda are the future and we believe they need our support in making their dreams come true,” Ntabgoba said.
She also revealed why the SOS Children’s Project was picked.
“The MTN Foundation invests heavily in educational ventures across Uganda and we, therefore, receive thousands of proposals and letters every year. However, we selected SOS Children’s Villages due to the personal nature of their proposal letter that was handwritten by a student and not the usual proposals on company letter heads. This showed us that it was written with a human touch and the impact of our support would be felt by the children themselves.”
On his part, the Kabarole District Inspector of Schools Joseph Rujumba highlighted the importance of the MTN Foundation donation on the positive impact on the learning of the school children:
“We are grateful to MTN Uganda for thinking about our children and investing in them. Our children have been learning on empty stomachs, lacking scholastic materials and lacking uniforms; but all this will change due to this donation by the MTN Foundation.”
