August is Here!

This month's report came in from the campus — this one written by Oroma Gloria, who runs administration and finance for the YDO team. If you're reading this — sponsor, shirt buyer, or someone who landed on a kid's page — here's what the last month looked like on the ground, in concrete terms.

The two women in navy

Start with the photo I can't stop looking at. Two women in matching navy dresses and headwraps, standing in front of a thatched hut, and if you didn't know better you'd think it was a portrait for a magazine. They're the cooks at Hope Bridge — the two people who feed the entire school, every school day. Porridge in the morning, beans and posho at lunch, every kid, every day.

In July the campus bought them proper kitchen uniforms and new kitchen equipment. On paper it's a hygiene upgrade — that's how it reads in Gloria's report. But look at how they're standing. Cooking for a whole school is skilled, essential work, and now the two women doing it are dressed like it.

What's on the chalkboard

One of the photos this month is from an Integrated Science lesson: the teacher chalking out Immunity and immunisation while the class copies it into their notebooks. "Immunity is the body's ability to resist some diseases" — that's the actual line on the board, being taught a short walk from the clinic where those same kids get treated. They're learning why the medicine works in the same compound where they receive it. That's what a health curriculum looks like when the school and the clinic share a fence.

Round two in the brooder house

The poultry project is on its second cycle. The first 300 broilers went in this spring; there are 200 chicks in the brooder house now, and they arrived already vaccinated — it's stamped right on the delivery boxes. The team runs feeding, cleaning, and vaccination on a schedule, and the goal hasn't changed: a campus that earns part of its own operating income instead of depending entirely on what we send from here.

Eight new tailors

Eight learners — six girls and two boys — enrolled in tailoring training in July. Same logic as the sewing, construction, and knitting programs already running out of the training center: give a young person from a household with no margin a skill they can actually charge for.

The daily rhythm

The rest of the report is the unglamorous stuff that makes a school a school. Morning devotions every day from 8:00 to 8:30 — one of the photos is a line of nursery kids with their hands pressed together, eyes shut tight. The Bible Challenge kept going, which is quietly becoming a public-speaking program as much as anything. The staff sat for an ethics and professionalism training on July 28. The PTA and School Management Committee both met. Class registers, exam files, payroll, and fee records all kept current.

The meetings and the record-keeping don’t make for dramatic photos. All of it is the difference between a project and an institution. Every shirt and every $25 month is buying the boring parts too, and the boring parts are why the rest works.

Thanks for being in this with me. More from the campus soon.

Kevin

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Source material for this recap came from the July 2026 administration report prepared by Oroma Gloria, Administration and Finance Assistant at YDO Uganda. Photos by the YDO team on the ground.