£15,000 grant for Ugandan women's project

Send a Cow is delighted to have been awarded, by Volac – a leading dairy nutrition company, a grant for £15,000 towards our life-changing work in central Uganda.

In recent years crop yields have steadily decreased in this region due to soil depletion, land erosion from overgrazing, unpredictable rains, poor farming methods and crop diseases. As a result, there is less food each year and little to sell for income.

Send a Cow works with six community groups of 380 women members in this region to provide a combination of social development, sustainable agriculture and dairy farm training and services to transform the lives of these women and their children. The ‘Central Uganda Women and Children Programme’, which Volac’s grant will help fund, promotes self-reliance and empowers women to generate livelihoods and have a better future.

One such woman is Julia Katende, a member of the Bamasuta Women’s Group. She received a dairy cow so that the family has access to milk and manure.

Julia and her husband Jacob have a large family of 12 children and the project has made a huge difference to the whole family. The cow has been giving them 15 litres of milk per day and they drink three and sell 12 litres through a dairy co-operative so that they can get at least 4,000 Ugandan Shillings per day - something they could only dream of before the project.

With increased income the younger children and grandchildren can now go to school. They have also bought beds, mattresses and utensils for the home, plus a bicycle. But the benefit of which they are most proud is the transformation of their little granddaughter. She was four years old at the time the cow arrived, but couldn’t walk. Since drinking cow’s milk, she has gained in strength so that she can walk, run and even go to school.

With Volac’s grant, the amazing success that the project has so far achieved is set to continue. We thank them and all our generous supporters for making our work possible.