Success Stories

Cecilia has been with Helping Hands Uganda-Canada since 2007. She is one of the first 10 children who were accepted
into the charity. Below is a snapshot into Cecilia’s biography when we first met her:

– She was 5 years old, was not in school yet.
– She lives with her parents and twelve siblings.
– She is a musoga by tribe.
– Cecilia like many of her siblings is sickly, most due to poor social economical status including poor feeding and lack of
proper medical attention.
– Parents: Wilberforce Mugoya and Elsie Namukose
– Her eldest brother has a mental illness, unfortunately he has not seeked medical treatment for it, in part because there is a
lot of stigma and unfounded beliefs surrounding mental illness in Uganda

In our Income generating project, we give each child accepted into the program two goats (a female and a male goat). Cecilia just like all other children in the program received her two goats.

– Goats can reproduce every year and are capable of producing 1-5 baby goats, if well cared for
– Cecilia’s family did an amazing job caring for her goats.
– Within one year they produced 4 baby goats at once.
– After a while, they produced again another 5 baby goats.
– By year 2010, Cecilia had a total of 11 goats.
– The family decided to move a step ahead and trade all the goats for a cow.
– The cow was pregnant by the time they acquired it, and produced a calf within 8 months

– This was a bonus to this family

The year 2011 was a bit tough on Cecilia’s family.
– They suffered food shortage because of poor harvests.
– They had also planted cotton as a cash crop but did not harvest much because the rains destroyed most of it.
– And their cows were affected by a disease.
– They quickly had to sell off the mother cow at the advice of the veterinary doctor, after its calf died.
– They kept the money and bought another cow a few months later
– They actually got a good bargain for their money, and the new cow reproduced in 2012
– Amazingly Cecilia has two cows again!
– These two last pictures are from Tracy’s recent visit to Uganda in March 2013. See Cecilia, her parents and her