Hi everyone,
Because I’ve received several emails, after my Ombogo Girls Academy post, asking for information on sponsoring a girl, I thought I’d post a quick one here. I don’t have the exact breakdown right now (I will be getting updated information from the current principle soon) but the cost is somewhere between $600-800 U.S., which covers most costs for the school year. This is what it cost us, but I’m not sure if it is the same or a little more.
I am going to sit down with Tim, when we are both back in Bellingham, and strategize how to get sponsors for the five girls I mentioned. The original concept was to pair a girl with a donor, so that a personal relationship could evolve, rather than it being a generic, untargeted gift. In the past, the donor could be a group of people pitching in for one girl, or a couple or an individual.
Tim takes a group of WWU students to Ombogo every year for a study abroad program connected to the University’s Department for Service Learning, and has been working with Ombogo for years, so he is a stable and trusted liaison. If anyone else is interested, let me know. After Tim and I get together, I can get you more information, sometime towards the end of August.
Thanks for asking!
I’m interested in exploring a way to sponsor.
Lisa
I’m interested. It’s likely I could get funding from my Rotary club as a whole to sponsor another girl as well. Look forward to hearing more when you are back, and I’m LOVING these blog posts!
Awesome, send us the info!
Might this be an idea you could share at WCC as a combined fund drive donation – or would that be too catch-as-catch-can?
It might be, if I paired it with a comprehensive presentation at all college. Day or something. But the original idea, which I think works best, is to have a personal relationship between sponsor and girl, which is what made our commitment so deep. But if a group got together to sponsor an individual girl, that would be just as good. I totally fell in love with the students at Ombogo, they were amazingly solid and open and curious. We would sponsor another girl, but right now we are helping Betty and two of her sisters get through university, and we are committed to helping Betty with whatever her next steps are.so at the moment we are maxed out. The other thing I want to do with the school is see if Ulli would be I interested in setting up a collaborative study abroad program with WWU’s service learning department, so that we could send students from both institutions, under his aegis, to Ombogo to study for a month. That would be a way of bringing WCC along initially, in a different way of helping….