High quality education for children in Uganda

Dear Friends,

First of all Nyaka would like to wish you a Happy Holidays. Certainly these holidays are going to be some of the happiest in years for Nyaka. Some of you may have heard that a serious drought has been affecting Eastern Africa and Uganda has not been spared. However, the rains came on schedule in September and from the looks of it the harvest is going to be plentiful by the end of December. For our students, our grannies, and their families the hunger season is now over! We have another class of beautiful graduates receiving their certificates in December. The Nyaka Director and Founder Jackson Kaguri will be at Nyaka for the graduation ceremony. Below you will find our graduates' pictures. These students need scholarships to go to secondary school by January 2010 ($500 for 1 yr of tuition, room, board, food, and clothing). Please look into your heart to see if supporting a student is part of your life's mission. If you want to see how our secondary school students are doing we have posted several video testimonials where Onesmus and Izadolo talk about what life is like and how it has changed at the Ishaka Adventist College. Follow the link below to see those videos. There have been several interesting developments in the Grannies Program. We found that our grandmothers sometimes make handcrafts but have no local market in which to sell them. We bought their handcrafts and several wonderful women volunteers held Mukaaka Parties (Mukaaka= Grandmother in vernacular) to sell these handcrafts, raise money for the Grannies Program, and, most importantly, to raise public awareness about what we are doing and find more committed supporters. See a pic of these activities below. If you are interested in getting involved in these Mukaaka Parties email Megan at mwhaley@nyakaschool.org. Our Nyaka students have been flourishing in their own imaginative think tanks lately. Our teachers are always trying to expand their teaching methods so as to deepen our student's intellect, learning capacity, and imaginations. Below you will find a link to pictures of 4 different projects which our students have been doing: 1. puppet play project 2. cultural greeting card project 3. bed friend project 4. photo journalism project. Our students did the photo journalism project with Elm Middle School students in Chicago, IL. In fact, below you'll find a link to a Chicago Tribune news article about the project and why Elm Middle School students got involved. Lastly, we at the Nyaka Office in the US are trying to "go green." We are doing this so that we can save costs on administration and send more to our kids. If we have your mailing address and/or you would like to receive updates, thank you letters, tax letters or other mailings by email please email our US office staff at mwhaley@nyakaschool.org.

Have safe and Happy Holidays! Nyaka AIDS Foundation

Links:

• Onesmus & Izodolo Talk
• Nyaka Student Projects
• Chicago Tribune Article