Receiving a gift, they say, requires that one pays it forward. With the all-important need for an education becoming clearer to more people in Uganda, Good Samaritans who choose to bail out many a stranded student are in turn creating a new breed on philanthropists, or so it should be.

Less than 20 per cent of S4 students in Uganda advance to A-Level. The figures are even more discouraging when one moves lower to primary school where roughly 75 per cent of P7 graduates call it quits after their PLEs.

Getting to university is the ultimate dream for thousands of people in school and in the case of the lucky few who have been aided, the need to share that dream should be even more vivid.
Esther Mbewoze understands what it feels like to be the recipient of such a gift. She did not disappoint her benefactors when she graduated with a First Class honours degree from Makerere University recently.

With her qualification in Information Technology, she is in a better position than many who did not have the chance.

Ms Mbewoze is lucky, indeed. Not everyone can come up from a needy background and pick up an honours degree.

“I am still searching but I know I will get something,” she says. The daughter of a peasant from Masaka appreciates that she’s been given a big break and nothing should stand in her way in form of constraints like unemployment. She knows that with her skills, she has it in her power to start up something of her own should the job market prove unfriendly.

Ms Mbewoze started off as a self-sponsored student but realised in her first year that she was probably not going to manage the task of paying all the fees in the long run. “A friend advised me to try Kulika Uganda,” she explains her decision, which saw her trying her luck with different organisations until she landed on one that suited her.

Usually, organisations that sponsor educational programmes have their conditions, which have to be met before they can put out any money. They will definitely want to invest in a going concern; someone who will go the distance in university.

Kulika Uganda receives funds from donors across the world. It is an organisation created in 1981 specifically to focus on creating a sustainable agriculture training programme.

For Annet Nabukenya, the intervention of the Madhvani Foundation was just in the nick of time. “Without that scholarship, I tell you, I would not have finished,” she says with the tone of gratefulness.
The Computer Science graduate from Makerere is doing her bit, giving back to her community by working at her university’s Social Sciences faculty in the computer laboratory for no pay.

“My work involves instructing students who come around and they are not computer savvy,” she says. She however says she is not a lecturer, not in that sense anyway.
Most organisations that sponsor education in Uganda are admittedly focused on primary education, probably because of the immense demand posed by the big number of children who never get to even start out in the first place.

Focusing on younger learners has the advantage of catching them early, thereby directing the destiny of a generation. Sponsoring adults means spending more and yet there is little one can do about the belief systems of the applicants; talk about teaching grandmothers to suck eggs.
The Muljibhai Madhavani Foundation was formed to cater for the science and technology needs of Uganda’s future. The scholarship programme is aimed at benefiting Ugandans pursuing either undergraduate or postgraduate studies at University level in Uganda and has been in operation since the 2003/04 academic year.

Every year, applications increase... At the recent graduation at Makerere, 107 undergraduates were sponsored the foundation and three postgraduates received certificates.
Successful candidates are drawn from students already at university, like Ms Nabukenya, who was in her first year when she applied. The Foundation monitors the progress of its charges and anyone who fails a paper and has to do it again (retake) is automatically struck off the list.

Organisations have to watch their money, obviously. They also want to make sure that what they set out to achieve in the first place, the betterment of the lives of the wider community, is achieved through these few individuals.

Like Ms Nabukenya says, “You can’t read when you are worried about paying tuition.” What beneficiaries of scholarships have to worry about after meeting their Good Samaritans is how their contribution to the community and the country will change lives.