We are very proud to introduce our Annual Report and Accounts for 2016/17, which illustrate another steady year of growth and progress for the charity.

This year, for the first time, we have chosen to publish our annual report as an integrated page on our website rather than to produce a printed booklet as we have done in recent years. We do so because we believe doing it this way offers the flexibility and opportunity to provide you with more engaging content and information in a way that a physical document does not.

One new school

1 millionth lunch

Doubling of teachers

Record project expenditure

Continued investment in infrastructure

We have continued our on-going investment in the infrastructure of our other existing partner schools both to build new facilities and replace worn out ones. This has been particularly focused at Kisimenyi Primary where we have built a number of additional classrooms, a kitchen and multi-unit staff house, bringing our total capital expenditure at this school alone to more than £250,000!

Funding of further teaching posts

In the year we doubled the number of teaching positions we fund from 8 to 16. This was both to create additional, new posts and also to take over the funding of existing posts previously funded by parents, which was necessary to ensure that the funds provided by parents were spread less thinly such that all non-government employed teachers are now paid equally. At the year end we were funding at least one additional teacher in each of our partner schools. Find out more about why we do this here

Responding to the drought

The entire East Africa region faced a severe drought in the latter half of 2016 and first part of 2017. This saw an almost total lack of rainfall in our project area for the best part of a year and resulted in shortages of water and spiralling costs of food. Despite this, we managed to maintain delivery of our lunch programme throughout the year and even extended it to reach 100 more pupils at three ‘feeder’ pre-schools serving Kisimenyi Primary School; we now feed 2,750 children every school day. The total cost of the programme in the year was around £37,500 but we expect it to be much higher in 2017/18 due to the increased price of food.

To ensure water supplies were maintained in our partner schools, we resorted to shipping in bowsers of clean water from outside our project area. In all, between January and March, when shortages were at their worst, we delivered some 150,000 litres of water at a cost of about £1,600, which was funded with proceeds from our emergency water appeal.

All-in-all, it was another record-breaking year for the charity with more funds spent on our projects and programmes than ever before, more teaching positions funded and more lunches delivered. The stats speak for themselves!

£181,781

Project & programme expenditure
2015/16 = £170,348

479,560

Lunches provided
2015/16 = 478,575

16

Teacher salaries funded
2015/16 = 8

Plans for 2017/18 and beyond

All our partner schools remain at various stages of their physical development but over the next 2-3 years we are aiming to complete these works and to equip all seven schools with similar facilties built to a similar standard. We estimate this will require an investment of approximately £250,000 in renovation and construction works.

We have also earmarked our likely eighth partner school. Whilst not geographically the next school in our project area, Mkamenyi Primary School is the next school most in need of our experience and expertise. It is an added advantage that the headmaster, Nicholus Mutui, is a man we know well and have a good relationship with having previously worked together at two of our existing partner schools. The problems at the school are an all too familiar story: dilapidated buildings with rusting roofs, gaping holes in unplastered walls, and crumbling, pot-holed floors; a lack of sufficient furniture forcing many children to sit on the concrete floor; and a complete absence of any water supply or food. We estimate that the works at Mkamenyi, which would benefit more than 600 pupils, could cost up to £250,000 and we hope to commence work later in 2018 or early 2019.

These activities and concerted efforts have helped to widen the charity’s supporter base, reduce our reliance on any single donor, and to increase the proportion of unrestricted income, which is borne out in the figures below.

£145,154

Total funds raised
2015/16 = £182,764

365

Individual donations
2015/16 = 238

50%

Unrestricted income
2015/16 = 14%

14%

Most income from one donor
2015/16 = 33%

Plans for 2017/18

In 2017/18 we will aim to build on these achievements and are targeting a total of 500 individual donations, year-on-year donor number growth of 20-25%, and unrestricted income levels of at least 60%. We will continue to make a number of very targeted investments in fundraising including purchase of places in challenge events and a first-ever promotional film.

The Trustees are pleased to report that the charity is in a healthy financial position.

The accounts for 2016/17 show a deficit of income (£145,154) against expenditure (£218,610) of £73,457, however this was due to the spending down of restricted funding accrued from previous financial years. The year closed with total funds of £75,333, of which £40,124 was held in restricted funds and the remainder in unrestricted funds/reserves.

We would like to thank the following for their support in the year.

Suzanne Payne | Carrie Hall Schalter | Allan & Nesta Ferguson Trust | Souter Charitable Trust | Educational & General Charitable Trust | PF Charitable Trust | Molitor Charitable Trust | Southworth & Co | Noisy Little Monkey | Aspect Capital | Hazel’s Footprints Trust | West Heath School | Hampden Capital