A new centre for the Rwenzori Special Needs Foundation (RSNF)

The Rwenzori Special Needs Foundation (RSNF) teaches disabled students vocational skills so that they can earn a living. It also supports livestock and arable farming projects so that the families supporting disabled children can improve their lives .  RSNF was founded in 2010 in Fort Portal, Uganda, and we have been supporting them since this time. The villages where RSNF works are desperately poor.

​Daniel Baguma, the centre manager at RSNF says: "The vast majority (80%) of disabled children live in the poorest parts of our district. Poverty is the greatest cause of disability and disability generally leads to even more extreme poverty. We break this vicious circle by empowering children, and their parents, and ensuring they can participate in their communities to the best of their ability.”

For fifteen years RSNF has been operating from rented poor quality accommodation.  Although the results of their work have been outstanding, a decision was taken to close the vocational school for a year and to build a new, much larger, centre.  This started with an extraordinary donation by an individual of £10,000 plus gift aid to buy the land, followed by a Big Give Christmas campaign in 2024 which raised a further £13,602 to pay for the first buildings.  Further grants and donations have followed bringing the total investment to date to nearly £50,000.  Not bad value for money for a brand-new vocational school! The centre includes:

·         Classrooms (137 square metres)

·         Dormitories (131 square metres) and office block from a refurbished building

·         Specially adapted washrooms

·         Dining room and kitchen

·         Landscaping

·         Ramps and fencing, and more!

To date we have not been able to visit the new site as there is a Foreign Office warning that only essential travel is recommended in the nearby area of Kasese (in which we also fund two schools and so need to visit), but we have some wonderful photographs of how the new campus is progressing.  We also chat most weeks with Daniel and receive regular reports.

From January 2026 the new centre will be able to enrol 60 students, and in the longer term over 100 students – that is nearly doubling its size from when the old facility closed temporarily at the end of last year.

Again, to quote Daniel – “we are creating a centre for the most vulnerable, abandoned and orphaned children with disabilities in the Kabarole District of Western Uganda. Our work will continue to have a powerful impact not only on the children with disabilities under our care, but also on the larger community a whole. The aim of this centre is to provide a safe and loving home for children with disabilities, and to give them a good education.  From this foundation they will be able to stand on their own feet and be agents of positive change in society.”