Equipping disadvantaged children with skills for a better future

Football as a medium to restore self-confidence, self-esteem, team spirit and joie de vivre to severely traumatised AIDS orphans and street children, or to make them experience it for the first time: Aktion Canchanabury and its partners have had very good experiences with this in recent years. Our partner for this project is a small NGO, the People Concern Children's Project (PCCP) in the Ugandan capital Kampala, with whom we have been working since 2014. In 2006, PCCP started a small education centre in the middle of the slum in Kibuti (district of Kampala) with three volunteers, where they initially taught 26 children to read and write. By the end of that year, the number of children had already risen to 100. In 2009, PCCP was officially recognised as a "community-based organisation".

Most children and adolescents in the project’s catchment area would normally have no chance of receiving a school education or other training due to a variety of circumstances (the death of their parents from AIDS or accidents, neglect, extreme poverty, etc.).

PCCP now has ten teachers and approximately 180 students. The school teaches children from preschool through fourth grade in reading, writing, English, mathematics, social studies, and science. Students who successfully complete the program can then continue their education at a public school.

In addition to purely academic programs, all children in the slum are also offered recreational activities. These include, among other things, a jewelry-making and shoemaking workshop led by professionals, where the children learn craft skills. Furthermore, there are various sports programs, environmental education with tree-planting initiatives, as well as community cleanup and sanitation efforts in the slum, and a theater and dance workshop

Following the sudden death of the charismatic project founder Moshin Juma during the COVID-19 pandemic, another shock came in 2024. The school was ordered to vacate the property on which it had been operating out of courtesy to Moshin Juma. Now the owners wanted to use the land themselves again. This presented Nixon, the new principal, and all members of PCCP with enormous challenges. They quickly decided to look for a new property. Of course, as a small organization, they did not have the funds to finance a new property. Eventually, Nixon found a plot of land with existing buildings in the neighboring Kabalagala slum. The existing buildings still needed to be renovated and converted into classrooms. The major catch was the purchase price, equivalent to just under €70,000.

The campaign decided to stand by the children and PCCP. If the campaign had not supported PCCP in purchasing a new plot of land, it would have meant the end of this small, dedicated NGO and the school. With the help of our loyal supporters and some larger donations we secured from other aid organizations, we were able to work together to finance the purchase of the land for PCCP.