West Nile Education Fund starts fundraising

The West Nile Education Trust Fund has launched a fundraising driving to raise Shs.1 billion for a scholarship fund for training science teachers and sponsor needy students.
Speaking at the launch of the drive on Saturday, Dr Charles Draecabo the chairman of the West Nile Education Trust Fund, said the Fund, which was established in 2013, is an initiative by people of West Nile to advance education and promote West Nile region by, among other things, supporting vulnerable bright students to enable them access higher education, supporting schools to train teachers and managers so as to improve the quality of schools.
“Now we are embarking on working with the private sector to educate the community and sensitise parents about the need to send children to school and ensure that children perform well. We have been offering scholarships to needy and bright students who performed well in engineering, nursing, pharmacy, in public universities. We have so far 28 who have graduated and have given us mileage,” he said.
He explained that previously, they have been hosting the monthly West Nile Night where members have been gathering to dance and they have been using the proceeds from the gate collections to sponsor the students.
As a community, they would also select eateries in Kampala where they would meet for self-sponsored dinners and the proceeds go to the Fund. 
He added that they realised that the approach was not effective in raising enough money, so they opted for a marathon scheduled for 29th December in Arua so as to target the people from West Nile who will still be on Christmas holidays.
According to Mr Robert Afema, the coordinator of WNEF, they have organised the marathon kits that will be sold all over the country and they have engaged the Uganda Athletics Federation to help them organise the marathon, which is now going to be part of the federation’s annual calendar event. 
He added that they are working with some sports personalities to popularise the event so as to get the 5,000 people they are targeting.
“So far, we have 28 students who have graduated in nursing, engineering, medicine, pharmacy and they are serving people in the regional referral hospitals. We want to work with the corporates to sponsor more scholarships, help us sell the kits so as to support the cause,” he said.