Projects
We work with the local NGOs such as St. Augustine Community Love Programme (SACLP), Amazing Love Uganda (ALU), and One Gift, One Child to fund initiatives to create local opportuity and seed sustainable local industry. Life-changing resources can require surprisingly modest funds. Your donation supports projects like these.
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Microeconomic Groups
In April 2012, the late Alec Johnson proposed to the St. Augustine Community Love Programme a structure for village-based cooperative savings and loan groups, based on local culture, to provide capital for small craft projects making items to be sold in the market for cash. Over 250 groups were formed, and some of these groups did very well. In 2023, a new Uganda NGO was formed, Amazing Love Uganda (ALU), to coordinate economic and financial training among these groups to strengthen their financial management.
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Menstrual Pads
Many girls in rural Uganda stop attending school when they start menstruating, due to social stigma and lack of sanitary products. Before COVID-19, TILT provided funds for training and to purchase sewing machines and fabric to enable schoolgirls to sew reusable menstrual pads for their own use and for sale.
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Seed Potato Storage
There are two growing seasons in Uganda. Potatoes are a staple. Seed potatoes are saved from each crop to start the next. These have been piled in the back of thatched huts. The St. Augustine Community Love Programme noted that these often rotted during the few weeks between seasons. Three times, TILT has donated $3000 for construction of simple ventilated secure buildings with racks for potato storage, built with volunteer labor and bricks provided by the farmers who benefit from them. This solved the problem of rot loss, and allowed sales of some of their supply at times of greater need and demand, and donation of other seed potatoes to impoverished families.
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Climate-adapted Seed
Six women’s VSLAs, totaling 180 women responsible for the support of 1,080 individuals, were given drought-tolerant and early maturing maize and bean seeds. The yields of these climate-adapted seeds were reported to be at least double the previous yields for most of the groups. The women and their dependents are now food secure, and there is surplus to sell for other community members’ consumption and planting. SACLP leaders are assessing the reasons for lower production by 2 or 3 groups so that problems can be resolved.
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Flour Mills
TILT initially provided six small, portable gas-powered flour mills for a womens’ entrepreneurial project in which groups of responsible women in a village are capitalized with a flour mill to start a business milling flour for their local area.
More recently, TILT provided grants totalling approximately $20,000 to fund three fixed maize milling centers in the Nebbi and Zombo districts. These mills package the flour without human touch, which allows registration to open a retail market in the district. Profits from these milling centers are being used not only to sustain and grow the businesses, but also are being used to seed other local businesses, such as poultry production.
On registering with the Local District Government as a retail business, the first group to receive packaging equipment learned that a dedicated store was required for their flour, one that is not used for grinding or for other storage. We have funded such a store for each of the women’s groups that has a commercial grinder.
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Three-wheeled Trucks
TILT granted approximately $5000 to purchase two small transport vehicles appropriate for the local terrain and roads sufficient to carry produce, small livestock, construction materials, packaging equipment, and more. These are rented to the VSLAs and used to facilitate timely transport both when planting and harvesting, improving farming output and marketability.
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Child Care Community Development Initiative
For several years, we have provided grants to Child Care Community Development Initiative, which grew out of a project to distribute books and school supplies donated by a European nonprofit. In 2014, the seven men involved in the book distribution did a community needs analysis. It disclosed a high number of uneducated single mothers and orphans (11.8% of children under 18) in their community. One of them, Stephen Nyitho, with his wife Beatrice, began taking orphans into their home. As the children grew, they taught them their own trade, tailoring.
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Tailoring Training
In late 2023, SACLP told us of fourteen girls who had been forced to drop out of secondary school because they could not afford the fees. In successive projects, TILT paid for tailoring training for them, sewing machines, training in running a VSLA, basic financial literacy, and initial business supplies.
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Goats for Kids
A breeding pair of goats is given to the family of a primary school student who need income to send their child to school. The student learns not only at school, but also animal husbandry at home—and also learns about paying it forward when the first offspring from the pair are given to more families with the same needs, and the same responsibility to pay it forward.
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Raising Swine
With funding from TILT, ALU built a facility to raise pigs using best animal husbandry practices. The composted manure, used as fertilizer, has increased crop production in the beneficiary village. The project is self-supporting and expanding. Piglets suitable for breeding are being given to other VSLA members and agribusiness students trained in and committed to best practices. Piglets not suitable for breeding are raised to market weight and sold to get money for feed. The district government has designated it a demonstration facility.
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Rescuing and Rehabilitating orphans in Haiti: One Gift One Child
Only a handful of Haitian orphanages actually nurture, educate and rehabilitate their children back into family environments. “Orphans” are exploited in Haiti. Most are actually children abandoned by their families. Many children are kept in servitude; both boys and girls may be sexually exploited. U.S. churches sometimes help foster this abuse by failing to carefully investigate how the orphanages use their support, how they are run, and how their income flows.
Completed Projects
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Starter Potatoes
Families of a primary school student who need income to send their child to school are given enoguh starter potatoes to plant a quarter acre. The student learned not only at school, but also farming at home—and also learned about paying it forward when enough of the first crop to plant another quarter acre was given to another family with the same needs, and the same responsibility to pay it forward.
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Scholarships
TILT has maintained a scholarship program for impoverished secondary students and a few vocational/technical students. There are now about 50 students in this program, which is slowly winding down as students graduate.
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Teacher Housing
Elementary teachers sometimes must walk several kilometers on paths through the bush because there is no housing near the school. A duplex near a school requires about $6000 in materials (cement floor, brick walls, steel roof, plastered interior). It is built with the volunteer labor of the students’ parents.