The Albino Child Sponsorship Program

Category : Child Sponsorship | Sub Category : Sponsor a child with albinism Posted on 2021-03-13 10:41:08

Matthias Yamumpaye at the age of 9 months 

Albino Child Sponsorship

Guidelines to sponsor a child with albinism in Uganda. 

 Warm greetings from Site for Community Services Programme (SCOSP)

Site for Community Services Programme (SCOSP) is a registered nationwide not-for-profit indigenous

 Non-Government Organization(NGO), registration number INDR 13339703NB, Permit Number INDP000703NB, not for profit company limited by guarantee number 80020000390597 and Community Based Organization(CBO), registration number 1123 which was established in 2010 and mandated to empower vulnerable people in the Ugandan communities with specific attention on people with albinism (Albinos). “Paypal doesn’t allow funds to be sent to Uganda at this time, so if you would like to initially

use PayPal instead of setting up World Remit (its not hard to set up!), feel free to send funds to our correspondent/intermediary person Gary Didge, (PayPal e-mail: djdidge@djdidge.f9.co.uk, who will manually resend the funds via World Remit).

1.      Welcome to our Albino Child Sponsorship Program!

Thank you for visiting our online project to read how to become a sponsor of an Albino child in SCOSP. We are convinced that your new connection with the albino child will mark the beginning of an exciting journey in your life, and will mean so much to the albino child and to his/her family, community and also to SCOSP.

Before you can formally become the sponsor of our project child with albinism, we ask you to take a minute and read through our Child Sponsorship Guidelines below in order to help you get the most out of your connection with the albino child. We hope you’ll find them very useful and should you have further questions don’t hesitate to get back to Michael or Annet via the contacts at the end of the document.

In addition to that, should there be anything that you think we could include in our guidelines after reading through, please do not hesitate to let us know as we’re sure it’s not possible to cover every detail and answer every possible question in advance. We’ll respond in the shortest possible time. We appreciate your valuable time spent with us as you read this and start a new journey with us and the albino child.

2.      Why sponsor an Albino Child?

Albino children are born vulnerable by the nature of their skin and sight, hair color and let alone the discrimination and attacks from the society towards them.

Even more, some of the children here come from backgrounds which are strikingly poor which makes it hard for them to afford even the basic needs of life thus they are left faced grim challenges in life having no other person to provide except in situations when a good Samaritan like you crosses their paths through SCOSP.

Most of them have faced rejection, abuse and direct attacks from their very immediate family members, and brutally handled by the communities they live in.

Despite the unbelievable experiences of these children, they often have quite a remarkable sense of bravery and tend to show a great sense of safety and hope a just world and better future ahead of them. It is good people like you that make it possible to help them make their dreams a reality. Our Albino children are very warm and friendly, and are not shy to speak to you.

For these beautiful children, finding a sponsor helps get their foot in the door to a successful education, good health, safe environment and a brighter future. We welcome sponsors from all over the world to take on this life changing role. An individual sponsor who is capable can sponsor more than one child and each child is designated to the only identified child and sponsor using unique Identification Numbers (IDs).

3.      Budget: How much is sponsoring an albino child of your choice?

We have three categories of Albino child sponsorship from which you can choose from.

For just 35 Euros a month for a child in pre and primary school, 50 Euros a month for a child in secondary school or 100 Euros a month for a child in college/University, you can fully contribute towards the wellbeing of an Albino Child and keeping them in school. Your donation will go a long way to lifting the child out of poverty and as well opening doors to a much brighter future.

For 100 Euros one time donation, you extend your impact beyond the child, helping their family and community to overcome the vicious cycle of poverty and to reach self-sustainability and dignity by helping the family to starting a small scale livelihood activity monitored by SCOSP Finance and Accounting team who manage the sponsorship funds and donations to albino children.

Our team identifies children who come from the poorest families and whose parents have been very cooperative and committed to supporting their children.

4.      What your money do?

 All the sponsorship money goes to the intended albino child/children.

i)     €35, €50 and €100 monthly for an albino child go to:

·         Paying school fees for the child in school.

·         Providing shoes, school uniform, and other school requirements.

·         Buying books, pens and pencils, soap and body jelly for the child.

·         Providing sunscreen to the albino child

·         Medical care of the child.

ii)    €100 one time donation helps to:

·         Start a small business

·         Buy goats or poultry for the family

·         Build a house for the family

·         Hire land for growing food for the family

  5.      How does the sponsorship work?

Upon selecting one or more children on our website, the sponsor goes ahead to fill in their details which our team uses to connect with them. Your email and phone, postal address is very vital for all your communications with us and your child.

The first step we take is to open a sponsorship file for the child and then break the good news to the child so that they can start writing to you the first letters. The SCOSP designated staff will use the contacts provided to connect with you with periodic news updates and pictures.

Our child will communicate with you by email or post through our dedicated sponsorship team whose task is to help each of the children to communicate their messages to their sponsors effectively in the right English and to translate but not construct for the young ones who may not know sufficient English.

Most of our teenagers are fluent in English and are able to communicate directly and in that case they usually write their own things and send it to you through the SCOSP team.

We do not limit our children as to what they can share with you. They can tell you just about anything in their lives.

We honestly say that the letters you receive and emails are their very own words expressed in English.

6.      Are we accountable?

An initial acknowledgement receipt from SCOSP is sent to every sponsor/donator soon as the money has been received by the SCOSP accountant/Finance and accounting officer.

The Albino Child Sponsorship System is carefully managed by a reliable Sponsorship committee which is appointed and supervised by the board to ensure that your donations go directly where you want them.

We’ll provide acknowledgement for all your funds and a breakdown of how the money was spent, with receipts items against the amount for which was paid. The expense receipts are sent to every sponsor every three months except in emergency situations.

In case of changes they are communicated in a periodic update every three months of the sponsorship year.

We discourage any solicitation of funds from you directly by a member of our team or the child/’s family which can have serious consequences on the relationship between you and the child.

Please notify us as soon as possible if you’re ever asked to provide more funds than what you have pledged to provide.

7.      Can I send a gift?

Our children will be excited to receive a package from their sponsor for their birthday or Christmas! We encourage you to send gifts such as shoes, clothes, a pair of sunglasses, crayons sweets, toys for the young ones or even a laptop or camera for those at university, in some cases a sponsor may choose to send a gift of their choice to the child of the child’s family.

Please note that the postage fees increase with the size of the package and therefore, it’s usually economical to send a couple of lightweight items than one bulky item. We however, normally have no issues receiving packages of any size. 

You can also post items meant for no one particular child. These will be used collectively for the benefit of all children and they may include; sunscreen, pieces of sunglasses, laptops, cameras, storybooks, and movies.

You can also chose to send gift money which the child can use to buy what they want such as dress, shoes, clothes, rabbits, goats, cow and food or birthday cake.

 8.      Can I send Pictures?

Why not? You can send a selfie or video of your home, family, pet or city through our email and you’ll certainly receive pictures from your child quite often!

Your child would also love to see where you live and how you live.

9.      Can I meet my sponsor child?

Not only will you be able to meet your sponsored child but you’ll also be able to:

a.        Take pictures with your sponsored child.

b.       Visit the school where the child studies.

c.        Take the child with you on an outing (with SCOSP team)

d.       Visit the family of the child. (with SCOSP team)

Please note that how you interact with the child during your visit is strictly subject to our Albino Child Protection Policy which is designed to provide safety for the child from any abuse or threat.

You will also need to make an appointment with our team ahead of your visit so that we can make the necessary arrangements to receive you and to connect you with your sponsored child at home or during school.

10.  During your visit to the child

As mentioned above, we have a Child Protection Policy which forms the basis of all your interactions with your sponsored child in the course of your visit.

·         During school days, you are allowed a maximum of a few minutes with your sponsor child at their school– depending on the school's policy.

·         For outing with your child, it can only be during day time. Going out with the child at night or late evening is not permitted.

·         The outing will be in the company by one of our child protection officers, who will also act as a guide, translator and supervisor.

·         We request that the sponsor pay for the activities of the outing with their sponsored child, their friends and the escorting SCOSP member of staff.

·         The sponsor is welcome to bring/buy gifts for their sponsored child during their stay.

·         The Child’s protection is the responsibility of the organization and as such, the sponsor cannot be allowed to take the child back with them should they want to do so.

11.  What visitors/donators who have visited are saying

"Sponsoring an albino child is priceless. The children are so pleasant and full of gratitude when they write to you, and they're definitely the nicest people you could ever want to meet. They're amazingly bright and very fun filled to share a great moment with. They're unconditionally hospitable!

“A good way to get people to dedicate a set donation”, Gary Didge.

Note: You can add here your reviews for purposes of other donators and or future sponsor parents.

12.  Termination of Sponsorship

Our sponsorship program aims at building lasting bonds between the sponsor and the child and we work hard to safeguard that.

We definitely would find it the most difficult and upsetting part of our work if one day, a sponsor announces that they would like to stop supporting their child for any reason.

But we are human and understand that sponsors also can meet financial hardships and other life challenges and thus may no be able to support the child to the end.

The sponsor may also discontinue his support any time on his/her discretion.

In such cases, we request that the sponsor write to us about his decision/inability to carry on the sponsorship so that we can quickly find another person to take on that responsibility. We would still be forever grateful for your tangible impact on the life of our child and would keep praying for your circumstances to change.

There may be cases where;

·         The sponsored child passes on.

·         The child's parents request to take their child from the responsibility of the organization.

·         The child requests to leave the of the organization (for adults).

·         The child becomes indiscipline and a potentially poses a threat to the organization and or other children (though which is not common but cannot be ruled out).

 In these situations, we always advise sponsors to start a new journey with one of our many unsponsored children, but there is no obligation to do so. Feel free to contact us should you feel disgruntled by our way of handling such a situation

13.  For enquiries

Drop us an email on the address below or a direct message Mr. Michael Sabiiti using our contact form on our website and we'll get back to you.

Phone: +256 78 152 4064(Whatsapp) | +256 701 846 605

Email: info@scosp.org

Website: www.scosp.org