R

The charming, smiley 22-year-old R is currently employed with Uganda Hands for Hope, supporting the Finance team as he prepares to begin his university diploma this year.  

R grew up in the heart of the Namuwongo slum. His story with Hands for Hope started when he was just four years old, living with his mother and sister in a tiny mud, one room shack. His mother worked where she could, washing clothes and making alcohol to try to earn enough for some food each day. Often their 50,000 shilling (£10) monthly rent was out of reach, and eventually they were thrown out into the street, literally chased away from their home by their landlord. School fees were an impossibility; R would watch his friends walk past every morning in their school uniforms, heading to nursery school without him. But for him, his lasting memory of being four is of being perpetually hungry and sad. 

Then one day life changed. Forever. 

A Hands for Hope social worker found R playing in the slum and asked why he wasn’t in school. Within a week, she had enrolled him at the newly formed Hands for Hope Nursery. Wearing a donated uniform, his first-ever pair of shoes and carrying a school bag on his back, he was now receiving two meals a day and had a sponsor covering his education. He admits his early motivation was the food—but quickly, school became something he loved. “God gives you the football, and you decide where to kick it. This was a big opportunity, a new world for me and my friends,” he says.  

“Even now I can’t put into words what Hands for Hope and my sponsors have done for my life. Without them I would never have gone to school, and I would still be hustling for a poor living in the slum.” 

Despite two years of school closures during COVID and returning briefly to street work, R persevered. With sponsor support, he finished high school, completed business college, and moved out of the slum community. 

Today, he rents a small flat near university. “Hands for Hope showed me another life,” he says. “This is how the poverty cycle can be broken.” 

For just £29 a month, your sponsorship could help another family break the poverty cycle.