Sylvia’s Children Urgently Seeking Aid for Ugandan Students

Teachers, students, and parents everywhere have had their lives turned upside down in many ways by the COVID pandemic. Here in the United States, school closures, home schooling, job losses, and diligent sanitizing and social distancing are challenging enough – but imagine what it’s like for educators, students, and families in a country like Uganda, where schools have been shut since March 10 and all public transportation has been halted. There, only five percent of homes and businesses have electricity, so classes and work cannot be conducted remotely. Indoor plumbing and private modes of transportation are just as rare, so families must walk for miles each day to fetch water from the nearest source, making diligent handwashing that much harder and visits from teachers impossible. For workers whose jobs have disappeared, there are no unemployment payments, no social programs, and no food banks. And as things begin to reopen, maintaining recommended social distances can be difficult in communities where residents live in close quarters and dozens of children share a classroom together.

Sylvia Allen, founder of the nonprofit Sylvia’s Children, understands this stark reality, especially for the students of the Mbiriizi Advanced Primary and Day Care School in Uganda. For the past 18 years, she has been the esteemed honorary “grandmother” of the school’s 1,000+ students, 25% of whom are orphans, and has been devoted to impressive ongoing efforts to care for these children in myriad ways.

This is the time of year when Allen and a team of volunteers would ordinarily be planning the annual November visit to the school, where the children would get to enjoy a festive holiday party, feast upon a hearty meal with meat sauce, and receive gifts of a new dress for each girl and a new shirt for each boy, plus simple treasures like new pencils and stickers. This year, however, things will be different. The school is being allowed to reopen at a staggered pace and under the strictest of guidelines, but there can be no long-awaited party due to space limitations. No team of volunteers will be able to travel to visit and there will be no delicious holiday meal. Instead of dresses and shirts, the children have a greater need for necessities like food, blankets, and handwashing stations. Those blankets will need to be shipped as quickly as possible, at considerable expense, to ensure that the students will receive them in time for Christmas. The handwashing stations – 18 in all, which the government will not provide – cost $109 each and are needed immediately.

This month, Sylvia Allen is putting out an urgent request for support to make this happen. Ever resourceful, she has been working with a company with a buy one, get one free program for 1,300 blankets, has lined up a freight service to guarantee their delivery, and made arrangements to have handwashing stations installed as fast as possible so the children can attend school safely and stay healthy. But a total of $7,000 is needed by November 15 to cover the costs and COVID has cancelled the organization’s traditional fundraisers this year.

Whether you have been a supporter of Sylvia’s Children in past years or are a first-time donor, your contribution right now is critical. To make a donation via credit card or PayPal, go to www.sylviaschildren.org and click on the “Donate” button. And while you’re on the website, take a look at the smiling faces of the beautiful children that you will be directly assisting and their joyful delight in school and at the annual Sylvia’s Children visits that have come to mean so much.

About Sylvia’s Children

Sylvia’s Children is a non-profit organization founded by Monmouth County, NJ resident and businesswoman Sylvia Allen to support the children at the Mbiriizi Advanced Primary and Day Care School in Uganda, Africa, where 25% of the 1,300 students are orphans. Over the course of 18 years, the organization has helped the school grow and become self-sufficient by providing 20,000 chickens, 49 pigs, 100,000 mango trees, a ten-unit housing complex for teachers to live on campus, a 6,000-square-foot medical clinic servicing the school and the village, multiple classrooms, a library, two dorms, and more. For more information about Sylvia’s Children, visit www.sylviaschildren.org.