Thank you so much! I've been so inspired by the response in this thread. Anwarite easily raised enough for her masters and I nearly have enough donations to add another kid. I'm going to take some of the advice in this thread to adjust things a bit and I'm very confident we'll be able to expand our education efforts in Ibumila soon. Thank you!
Since you mention expanding I thought of something I heard from a friend who is running an NGO in Uganda. They built a school and other things, and they also sponsor some students. But despite being a strong organization with multiple local people working there, they limit the number of students they sponsor because all the students they sponsor have to be tracked and monitored to make sure the kids are really going to school or actually still need the help, etc. As soon as you get to a dozen kids or more that can become a full time job. You'll need to find someone you can trust to do that, and you'll need to pay them. From a distance that is very hard.
You probably also don't want to focus on just one location to avoid becoming a dominant factor there making people expect that you'll help them. I can actually ask my friend how he approaches that, and if he has some advice. Personally I'd pick only a few cases per village, and more importantly, per school. Because I just remembered another thing my friend experienced: Many of the sponsored kids went to their school, and those kids started sticking together because they thought they were something special. Once he realized that he broke that up of course (I don't know how though) and made sure that the the sponsored kids would integrate with the rest as normal.
You are probably have thought of some of this yourself in some way, but I believe it is helpful to hear it from someone else too, to confirm or challenge your own ideas about that, and learn from the experience of others.
I really appreciate this, thank you.
I had been planning to hire Anwarite when she was ready. I have spoken about this with her. I've known her for almost half of her life. She is a very impressive women, very smart, confident, and extremely hard working. She can do the ground work that I wont be able to if TEP expands to a dozen or more students.
I honestly hadn't given much thought to what you brought up in your second paragraph. At the moment the kids go to 4 different schools between the 5 of them (some schools are gendered, some students are in different grade levels). Expanding to a different village would be difficult but doable. These areas are very remote and disperse. It might be a half mile walk to your neighbors house.
You've given me some good things to think about. Thank you.
Amazing. Hit me up if you're on the cusp of supporting another student and need a little bit more.
I'll promise to donate for 2 years if all things stay steady for me