Dear friend,
Greetings and Blessings from Excel ministries, and Excel Kids Academy Uganda! We hope you had a great thanks giving weekend with family and loved ones! Reflectively we have so much to be thankful for, most and above all, the gift of life, friends and family across the world!
We are overjoyed you Joined us on this journey of raising a Christ centered, innovative and creative child as Excel ministries and Excel kids program. This is one of the most exciting kingdom ventures we ever embarked on. Our first year of operation has been of all sorts. We have had our fair share of challenges attendant to any venture of faith, but we have seen miracles of provision and divine intervention in so many ways. What inspires everyday through all this is the joy to see a potential world changer being raised and mentored right before us. This has been, and remains our sole focus, and we would never change that for anything else! Here below are some of the highlights of our news/achievements, successes and challenges this year. Enjoy!
Community outreach to children and the elderly.
At Excel kids we love making new friends and ofcourse keeping old ones! We are so glad to have hosted two new missionary friends this year- Angie Swearingen and Monica Buttram from West Virginia-USA. We had a lot of fun with them and our children! In partnership with them, we were able to reach out and bless close to 200 community children with a meal, a donation of a bag of sanitaries, and scholastic materials. We had so much fun with them both in the classroom and interaction at our village. We were also blessed to reach out to some of the vulnerable elderly in the community with a hand of help in food supplies. Thanks to all partners who donated the gifts and supplies, and Big thanks to Monica Buttram and Angie Swearingen for championing this cause. Below are a few photo highlights;
MDD and talents development;
Music is a universal language through which we can communicate and demonstrate our unique cultures and talents. We are glad we have been able to work on the musical talent of our children, and continue to do so. As a Christian academy, we hope to see these talents grow to bless the kingdom of God and the world at large. Our children love singing and dancing-using their God given gifts and talents to serve Him and others.
Practical learning of natural and physical sciences;
Unlike the traditional school set up in Uganda, we are using innovative approaches for kids to understand science and other subjects better. We have developed the use practical models for children to learn science well. This should go a long way in raising the breed of innovative, creative and transformative leaders that our country and communities so desperately needs
Discipleship and character development;
In a world continuously getting so bankrupted of moral values and Christian principles, one of our last bastion is preparing our children/next generation. Our children continue to be grounded in basic Christian living principles and character development. We have integrated Spiritual and moral values into our academic programs to train our children. These include prayer, sharing and caring, God’s word, love, faithfulness, hard work, generosity, integrity etc. We are combining academic excellence and character development to raise an excellent child apt for the 21st century challenges.
Sustainability projects
It has been said that “a hand up is better than a hand out”. We absolutely agree with this. We are so thankful to long time friends-Susan and Joe Konieczny for their generosity which has enabled us to walk this path this far. We continue to work on our empowerment projects that we believe are essential for our long term sustainability goals. We do this in conjunction with our other community empowerment ministry arm- the Nehemiah development group- whose vision is to rebuild our community’s economic walls. Part of these projects currently are;
Food farming; we try to grow food both on the little space we have at the center, and on another a little distant farm to create food security. We are currently growing maize, bananas, cassava and other staple foods. We are modeling urban farming projects for our children and community members.
Animal rearing; We are rearing animals both for children meat supply, community empowerment model projects. These include; pigs, Rabbits, Chickens, goats & fish on a limited space. We are believing God to be able to add cattle for milk supply.
Art and crafts; This is done as an effort to skill our youths on the program with skills not only to keep them busy and productive but to earn an income. They include hand crafted shoes, mats, ornaments from local materials, tailoring, etc
Business & enterprise development and the move; This is exclusively done through the Nehemiah group, which is our church based initiative to serve our communities through economic empowerment. Mid this year, to serve this vision better, we made some major changes of moving offices from the rented facility to our home center. This move was aimed at curtailing the recurring high expense of renting office space and other overheads which continue to be a major drain from our meagre resources. Our services continue through the empowered members as we organize our new home! If you are interested to learn more, and how you can participate in any of our sustainability projects, please let us know and we will share details with you.
“Tent making“- Wild heart! Our main tent making enterprise is Wildheart African safaris, which basically handles travel logistics of our dear guests. We highly recommend a safari/tour to all our visiting friends to see the beauty of Uganda and East Africa. This is also one way of giving back into the country economically. We do this in collaboration with RegalTravelby design under that capable leadership of our long time friends, business and ministry partners- Ronald and Nancy Thaxton. We strive to grow this into a regional tour power house that can render business services from transport logistics, concierge services, accommodations, airport transfers, to arranging grand safaris to Uganda, East Africa and beyond. The proceeds from Wildheart are largely dedicated to our ministry and voluntary work in Uganda. If you ever have friends coming to Uganda, please do recommend them to us and we will be happy to serve them.
End year Christmas party and outreach;
As our custom is, every year we celebrate Christ’s advent with a Christmas party and an outreach to the vulnerable members of the community. We believe, Christmas is not just about us, but others as Christ came to serve not to be served. Other than simply keeping the good news of Christ with us and our small family, one of the many ways of sharing the greatest gift ever given to humanity is giving back to the community by caring and sharing. We would like to request you, if you can, to support this outreach as we reach out to the ”least of these
Challenges!
Under staffed! To maximize the potential of our children, we need more staff to handle the human resource needs and other areas of development of our programs. This is challenge is basically because of our shoe string budget that cant afford us to hire more at the moment.
Limited Space; we continue to believe God to enlarge the place of our tent. The place where we dwell is too little for comfortable accommodation and our activities
We covet for your further prayers and support in the following areas;
- Children education sponsorship (monthly, termly or annually)
- Feeding & upkeep (monthly, termly or annually)
- Teachers/Staff emoluments.(Monthly, termly or annually)
- Infrastructure development (One-off or as needed)
If you are interested in knowing more details, kindly reach out to us and we will be happy to share our details. joabsonko@gmail.com +256772414828/+256702414828
Blessings!
Joab Sonko
Team leader, Excel ministries.
