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!