Dave wins Excellence Award

Dave won the Hills District Tertiary Level Excellence Award last Friday evening. This was an award for making a significant difference to the community, and excellence in his tertiary studies!

Southern Highlands News Article

UFF received coverage in the Southern Highlands news last Friday. To read the full story, go to: http://bowral.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/annabelle-chauncy-school-dream-comes-alive/1633537.aspx

Hills News article

UFF's Buy A Brick Campaign has launched! To read more about it through Hill News' interview with Dave Everett, check out:
http://www.hillsnews.com.au/news/local/news/general/help-needed-to-build-a-school/1617671.aspx

Marie Claire Award

For full coverage of UFF's $10,000 award from Marie Claire and Garnier, please see the link below!
http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/b/marie-claire/9482/garnier-take-care-awards-celebrating-women-who-take-care/

UFF Launch

We would just like to pass on a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who came along to our launch. We were thrilled to have the support of so many people!!
We are delighted to have raised close to $10,000, marking an impressive start to our "Buy A Brick" fundraising campaign...
We hope you had a great night and will join us at the next UFF event in the near future!

Thank you

We are delighted to announce that UFF was awarded $10,000 in the recent Marie Claire/Garnier Take Care Awards...

We would like to say a huge thank you to Victoria-Jane Otavski who nominated Annabelle, and also to everyone who voted to make this possible.

We are thrilled with the result, bringing us one step closer to the school construction in 2010!

Thanks again to everyone for your ongoing support!

Official Launch 27th August

UFF's official launch has been set for 7pm on the 27th August, on Level 2 at The Republic Hotel on the corner of Pitt and Bridge Streets, Sydney.

We're ready to tell you all about the school!

So come along to hear our plans for the future and help us to raise money to purchase land in Uganda in December, and begin construction in July 2010.

There will be raffle on the evening. Prizes include:
- a signed Wallabies jersey
- $1000 worth of personal concierge services
- a weekend away/3 night mid-week stay for 2 to the Heronswood House B & B in the Southern Highlands
- $150 voucher for dinner at Sugaroom, Darling Harbour
- $200 voucher for Sails Restaurant, Lavender Bay
- dinner at Philip's Foote in the Rocks
- an i-pod
- Harper's Bazaar gift pack
- a firewood delivery to your home
- 12 month subscriptions to Men's Health and Women's Health magazines
- 12 month subscription to High Life magazine
- lots of wine and beer

Light refreshments will also be provided.

We hope to see you there with your friends, family and co-workers!

Hi to all our UFF supporters!

It’s been a busy few months at United Future Foundation, and we thought we would give you an update on our progress… Dave and Annabelle have both returned from overseas in the past few weeks.

Dave flew to Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand to check out what’s happening over there, while Annabelle was in Uganda for 3 months, working on the on-ground negotiations for UFF. This included obtaining a solicitor for NGO registration, meeting with local government members, the Ministry of Education and various key players in the development circle.

We are delighted to announce that we have chosen the area in which we are going to operate! The area is called Kasanje, a small fishing village one hour southwest of Kampala, close to Entebbe airport. There is a deficit of educational facilities in the area, and many children are not attending school due to the sand mines operating in Kasanje. The sand mines are a dangerous place for the children to be working in, unskilled and under-age. Many families in the district do not have any other choice but to send their children to work, since they cannot afford school fees, shoes, uniforms and books for them. We look forward to the challenge of helping these disadvantaged individuals!

We are also happy to announce that UFF is now registered as an Australian NGO, thanks to the help of our pro bono legal team at Deacons. We are fully operational, have a bank account and can’t wait to get the fundraising rolling! Stay in tune for the next UFF fundraising event.

If you would like to assist in fundraising, or to donate, please contact us via Facebook, our blog http://www.unitedfuturefoundation.blogspot.com/, or our email info@uff.org.au.

We have been working with our architects, Day Bukh in Paddington, who have designed us some amazing school plans to ensure that our education centre is modern and amenable to the Ugandan environment. (See the School plans posted below).

The school is a flexible construction, useful for both primary school aged pupils, and the school dropouts and women to whom we intend to offer vocational training. It is a U-shape building with opening interior walls to offer the teachers the ability to create open classrooms. This will enable the pupils to school as close to their natural outdoor state as possible. The education centre features health rooms, agricultural area, bell tower and inter-connected classrooms. There is also a fully functional kitchen included in design plans so we are able to offer the children 2-3 meals a day. We will be offering the community weekend seminars on issues such as water sanitation and HIV/Aids in this structure.

In the past two weeks, we have been focusing on creating specific management and action plans. We plan to begin construction in Uganda in June 2010. So stay in tune to the latest UFF news and if you are interested in helping us, don’t hesitate to drop us a line or forward this on to anyone else interested in our work!