Farm and Livestock Project

Update : October 2022

Six months ago, the CLDC Board put the farm up for sale to raise funds for building the first phase of our Children’s Centre. Recent pledged donations to CLDC, totalling £10,000, plus accrued funds from our Oxford bookstall sales, now adequately cover the first phase construction costs - and so the farm is no longer for sale.

The CLDC Board expresses publicly its gratitude to the anonymous Oxford donors whose philanthropy has enabled our Children’s Centre to become a reality.
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April 2022

At a recent meeting in Masindi, the CLDC Board agreed to sell the farm and livestock in order to provide funds for phase 1 of building our Children’s Centre. The fenced ten acres of farmland and water borehole are currently up for sale.

Our farm

From the outset, we always hoped to buy some land and establish a farm that would not only generate regular income through selling farm produce, and breeding and selling livestock, but would also be a training farm to teach children about crop management and animal husbandry. It was not until 2017 that we were able to buy ten acres of farmland and set in motion our long-term plan.

Some years earlier, starting with £50 given by Patrick Musoni — a Ugandan living in Oxford — expressly for buying a cow, we bought some animals and chickens. We then developed a livestock programme, teaching children how to rear and care for animals, and were able to begin our gifting scheme. Giving young animals — piglets or goats, or young chickens — to disabled children has enabled them to generate income for their families and begin to develop a sustainable life for themselves.

The scheme has proved to be very successful. One child, who has physical and intel­lectual disabilities, has built his own house after selling the piglets from his one pig. Another, with visual and intellectual impairment, has progressed from rearing one hen to breeding goats — and plans to buy a cow after selling his goats. Children who have received a piglet also pass on one piglet from the first litter to another under-privileged pupil at the school, promoting the culture of sharing and co-operation.

On our farm land we have sunk a borehole for fresh water, and have built a brick dwell­ing for our herdsman and his family. As soon as the solar-powered water pump and storage tank have been plumbed in, the herdsman will have a supply of running drinking water — a rare commodity in rural Uganda — and, even rarer, an indoor flushing toilet! Fresh water will also be available in a drinking trough for the animals. We have allocated a plot for the herdsman to grow food for his family.

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