Our primary cause is 1moreChild. Once we hit the annual fundraising target required by 1moreChild we donate the surplus to Lyra in Africa.
1moreChild was set-up by Harry & Hen Ferdinando in 2008 to help enable street children in Jinja, Uganda to go to school and prosper. Ride25 raises money for 1moreChild for the following key reasons:
A small amount of money goes along way – as little as £15 per month can transform a child’s life. 100% of all money donated to 1moreChild goes to tackle the problem. There are no western overheads, admin costs or wastage. In addition Harry & Hen pay all their own costs. The money raised from the cycle will make an enormous difference to 1moreChild and enable them to take many more children out of the slum.
1moreChild provide school fees, 3 meals a day, school uniforms, school supplies, shoes, clothes, medical care, tutoring, mentoring, a football club and various other activities.
Visit 1moreChild.org for more info.
Lyra, based in Iringa in Tanzania is very similar to 1moreChild in many ways and was set up to enable girls to complete their schooling.
Lyra was initially set-up by Maria Spink to build “Hostels” in the grounds of secondary schools in Tanzania. A high percentage of rural girls drop out of secondary school partially because of walking 10-15KM each way to school. Some fall pregnant after accepting lifts on motorbikes etc. The Lyra solution is to build a hostel that houses circa 100-140 girls so that they can stay at school. The annual drop-out rate of these children has reduced significantly from 15% to 2% per annum. The teenage pregnancy rate has dropped to zero from 6-10 pregnancies per annum per school.
So far, Lyra have built 15 hostels housing about 3,000 girls at any one time. The hostels are only built if they local authority commits 30% of the build costs and the community agrees to offer significant resources (circa 4% of the cost) in terms of building material / manpower / harvest etc. Once they are built the structures and running costs are handed over to the community so there is minimal ongoing overhead running the hostels. The rest of the construction cost is funded by donors at a one-off cost of £60-70k per hostel.
Lyra also funds places in these hostels (food costs etc) for the most disadvantaged at a cost of 250USD per annum per child.
In 2017 Lyra started a Youth Enterprise Scheme that both intensively trains and provides a Savings & Loan Scheme to give participants everything they need to start a business and become at the very least self-sufficient. It now has over 1,300 entrepreneurs running a wide variety of businesses from mushroom farms, chickens, food supplements, +++ This well thought out scheme has been wildly successful and has resulted in 80% of participants at least doubling their income and providing employment for at least one other person. The Scheme is now being adopted by other organisations in Tanzania. Lyra has also built IT facilities in several schools.
Visit Lyra in Africa for more info.
1moreChild helps 200+ children in a variety of ways. They currently rent six houses in Jinja, four boys’ homes and two for girls. These homes accommodate the children that don’t have families, and act as a ‚Äòyouth centre’ for those who live in the slum village of Masese. The children who still live with their families come to the house every day and it has become a place that they all call ‘home’.
Each home has a full-time house manager to oversee the house and to be a positive influence in the children’s lives. They also provide after-school tutoring, medical care and mentoring. There is also a house mother who oversees the cooking and cleaning.
They are also a place where they can invite other children still on the street. On Monday and Tuesday evenings and Sundays, the houses are open for any street children to come and have a meal.
On Saturdays they have a family lunch which all the 1moreChild boys and girls attend. Afterwards they have a football match or play various games at the houses.
They believe that children require the basic needs mentioned above in order to function well at school and that education is imperative for success in today’s world. However, in their opinion, mentoring is the key to being able to face the hardship, corruption and challenges in Ugandan life today. Their staff members spend hours each week investing into the lives of the children individually and in groups, teaching them values like honesty, respect, integrity and leadership skills. They believe, to do this effectively, the children need role models from their own tribe. As a result they have purposefully recruited successful Karamojong young men and women with a desire to work with vulnerable children from their own tribe.
