The Muwayo trading center area is in Bugiri District in southeastern Uganda, about 4 hours east of Kampala and one hour west of the Kenyan border, along Highway A109, the major highway that is Uganda’s only land link to an ocean port, in Mobassa, Kenya.  Bugiri district is about 400 square miles (20 miles x 20 miles), with a population exceeding 500,000.  The land around Muwayo is gently rolling hill country, and most of the people in the Muwayo area are subsistence farmers, growing matooke, maize, cassava, millet, bananas, sweet potatoes, and rice.

In Muwayo, Community for Humanity has partnered with Christ’s Fruit-Bearing Church to aid their work in the areas of education and microloans for family businesses.

In the area of education, we are helping with the construction of a permanent building for the Muwayo Nursery and Primary School, and also helping to establish a student sponsorship connection between donors and students whose families are unable to afford the school fees. Ugandan schools are organized around 7 years of primary education followed by 6 years of secondary education.  In 1997, the Uganda established a Universal Primary Education law to provide free primary schooling for all children.  While enrollment in UPE schools soared from 3 million to over 8 million in 2013, the public primary education system has been plagued by high dropout rates (68%), and by poor quality, due to extremely high class-size (averaging between 70 to 150 pupils per class), and to the limited funding of the public education program (about $2.10 per student per term).  In addition, the publicly funded schooling does not cover fees for scholastic materials, including pens and exercise books, required school uniforms, lunch fees, and even, in some cases, bricks for the classroom.  For many poor families, these extra school expenses are prohibitive, and the students end up dropping out.

In the area of microloans for family businesses, we are helping to establish relationships between donors and families (most often women with children) who need credit to start and operate a small family business.  These loans are repaid into a Fund for Humanity, managed locally by the Christ’s Fruit-Bearing Church, and this fund is, in turn, redistributed out for new non-interest microloans to new families.