Ukama is a non-profit organization that enables you to provide micro-scholarships
for children in need.
What we do?
We strive to empower children who have limited
access to education by connecting them with concerned individuals
elsewhere who may have the capacity to help.
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- The challenge: access to education remains a critical developmental
issue across the globe
- The opportunity: in many regions, ample schooling infrastructure
exists and can be accessed at relatively low costs
- Our mandate: to bridge the access gap by partnering
with organizations that cater to the basic educational needs of
our target children
- The underlying assumption: micro-scholarships provided
by concerned indivduals can be aggregated and channeled towards meeting the
educational needs of entire communities.
We hope to provide our students with a set of future opportunities
that is broader in scope than the realities they currently face. We
believe that inaction is careless and illogical, and that Ukama provides
interested individuals with a very simple way to respond to a large
and meaningful challenge.
Who? Where?
Children in high-density urban neighborhoods within Zimbabwe.
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Ukama is currently supporting Chinyaradzo Children's Home, an orphanage
in Harare. Chinyaradzo has been serving orphans since 1962 and provides
for the overall care and development of 60 children.
Why?
Because education is central to broad-based empowerment.
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Children represent the most vulnerable segement of society within
marginalized economies - they are often farthest removed from access
to basic provisions such as shelter, nutrition, healthcare,
social/legal counsel and education. Particularly exposed are
those who have limited earnings potential and lack a family income
base - such as orphaned children.
Education represents an eventual window of escape from childhood
poverty and is critical in short-circuiting the transmission of
intergenerational poverty.
Education has been key in effecting structural changes in economic
welfare and wealth distribution - particularly within societies that
exhibit extreme skews in distribution of resources and wealth.
Why now?
Economic (and political) factors have resulted in severe
hyperinflation in Zimbabwe and subsequent collapse of the
local currency. This has led to the adoption of the US$ as the sole accepted
tender and has made certain basic services inaccessible or unaffordable
for those without access to scarce foreign currency.
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Among the inflationary outcomes has been a dramatic hike in school fees
and conversion of school fees to a US$ basis - making primary and
secondary education prohibitively expensive for many children.
Children who had previously been attending primary and secondary school
face the threat of expulsion given the inability of child-support
organizations to absorb the higher school fees. Our mandate is based
on defending access to primary and secondary education for these children.
How you can help.
You can assist by providing monthly micro-scholarships or by making a
one-time contribution - or simply by communicating
Ukama's vision to others who might share a social consciousness
similar to yours.
