Masindi Centre for the Handicapped
Masindi Centre for the Handicapped (MCH), a boarding school is situated on a hillside some 10 kilometres from Masindi Town. It was started in the early 1980s by Livingstone Barongo in just one room for 20 children with varying handicaps. FOAG’s first visit to MCH was in 1988 and from then onwards the centre has received financial support towards the running costs and specific projects.
Eseri Kaifi is the current Headmistress and she leads a dedicated team of 15 teachers and 22 support staff. Last term the number of children was 112, 61 girls and 51 boys. Their handicaps are varied and include deafness, autism as well as physical handicaps. The emphasis is on the appropriate education and vocational training to enable the child to re-integrate into family and village life with skills such as knitting, sewing, agricultural, woodworking and computer operating. As each child leaves the centre they are given a resettlement pack to enable them to earn a living in such roles as tailoring, carpentry or leather work.
New Kitchen
FOAG members responded wonderfully to the 2006 Summer Appeal for a new kitchen at MCH. This is housed in a new building and the fuel efficient insulated cookers with chimneys are in direct contrast to the previous smoke filled kitchen.
The kitchen before
The kitchen after
Eucalyptus Tree Project
Over several years FOAG has provided funds to enable seedlings to be purchased so that a woodlot could be established. The first logs have now been harvested from the 3 acres of woodlot planted four years ago. These are now stacked for drying before being sawn up for use in the kitchen. Each year a quarter of the woodlot can be cut to provide fuel and thus a great cost saver for the centre.
Members of the 2010 project monitoring team by the woolot
Latest News (September 2011)
Bring together tropical sunshine, adequate rain and a little care and you can almost see the trees you have just planted growing in front of you! FOAG has funded MCH in western Uganda planting trees for 4 years and already the first have been harvested. Trees are critical in Uganda. Not least they provide a reliable source of fire wood to cook meals for the 100 children who live at the Centre in term time. And with global food prices rising it was encouraging to see all the farm land at Masindi Centre now planted with cassava which when harvested will make a simple yet filling meal for the children and staff who planted it. MCH continues to be a dependable provider of specialist care and teaching for children with a very wide range of disability. - Iain Patton
Total given last year - £5684.00
Project Coordinators: Jan McConville and Val Clark
Jan is a retired Business sector Bank Manager and is involved with several projects as their Treasurer. She first started to work with FOAG in 1997 and joined the Committee in 2003. She regularly travels to Uganda and has visited all of the Projects as part of the Project Monitoring Teams.
Val joined the FOAG Project Monitoring Team visit to Uganda in 2004. Val now oversees the projects at Mengo and Guluddene, and jointly, with Jan McConville, at the Masindi Centre for the Handicapped. She has visited Uganda on four occasions with the PMTs. The motivational pull of FOAG for Val is from the control the charity has over its funding and the clear determination members have in seeing that their effort and the generosity of the associates is not lost on bureaucracy and corruption.
Contact Us
replaced window and shutters to one of the classrooms.
Budaka Cheshire Home and Rehabilitation Centre - Aims to improve the quality of life for children with disabilities in a relatively poor agricultural area in Eastern Uganda.
Butiru Cheshire Home - Butiru Rehabilitation Cheshire Home is a non govermental organization run by the Sisters of Mary as a home for the rehabilitation of 40 - 60 disabled children. Children with physical disabilities are assessed through outreach clinics. Many of these are in need of operations. FOAG assists annually with the cost of operations.
St Francis Rehabilitation Centre - St Francis Centre finds children with various physical disabilities, in need of corrective surgery , arranges for their operations at local hospitals, mainly Kumi, and looks after them and their education including vocational training to enable them to be confident, useful members of their communities.
Kamurasi Primary School - Offers specialist education such a brail and sign language, vocational training to provide life enhancing skills and a standard curriculum based education. Kamurasi advocates integrated teaching with disabled children learning alongside the able bodied compatriots.
Mengo and Guluddene - The Hospital's vision is to encourage each child in both the schools and clinic to develop as fully as possible – physically, emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually.
Similar Projects
Tree planted to commemerate the instulation of electricity on 2004
Val Clarke and Livingston Barongo (the schools founder)
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