About COVCC
We founded Christ Our Vision Child Care (COVCC) to help respond to the overwhelming number of orphaned and vulnerable children we met in our community, and when we realised the small private assistance we tried to offer these kids was not enough.
Our Children’s Ministry is a locally-run, Christian-based organisation that runs a Nursery and Primary School in Kalagi town, Mukono District, which is the second worst AIDS affected area in Uganda.
Many of our students are orphans – children with no parents or vulnerable widowed mothers – who faced unsafe, neglectful living situations. The orphans live in COVCC’s boys’ and girls’ orphans homes, where we give them food, shelter and clothing. COVCC sponsors the orphans to receive an education in our school. The school also welcomes day students from Kalagi and from further afar.
Our Children’s Ministry has been able to grow through the help of family, friends and generous donors and volunteers. There are many more children we see in need who we can’t yet help. But we hope we can continue God’s work and grow our school with your support!
We welcome you to visit us, meet our kids and see our work!
Pastor Ssekirime Samuel & Robinah Ssekirime
Our Story
In 1999 we met a girl called “Maria” whose parents had separated. Her single mother owned a small salon which caught fire, leaving her with little to live from and nothing to fund Maria’s education. Mrs Robinah Ssekirime started paying Maria’s school fees. She sustained her education up to Primary 7 level, when her mother was able to reopen her salon.
In 2002 God called us to minister in the Kalagi-Mukono district. At the house we first rented in Kalagi, we found another family like Maria’s. The children had been abandoned by their father. We helped the little boys with primary education, and we offered the bigger kids clothes – it was how we could afford to help at that moment. We saw many others in need – children who had lost one or both parents, whose parents had abandoned them, or whose parents could not afford to supply even the most basic needs.
In 2003 we opened a church in Kalagi and started looking after six vulnerable children who came from the community to attend Sunday service at church. At that time the orphaned children were not studying but working digging in the gardens. We started to help these orphan children with clothing and scholastic materials. We then took a leap of faith and started paying school fees for ten children at a local government school. Through the support of our family members and others in the community, we were able to grow the number of vulnerable and needy children being sponsored to attend school.
By 2008 it was becoming more difficult to continue sponsoring government school fees. Pastor Samuel Ssekirime had a vision to start up a school and orphanage around the church premises. At the outset many school classes were held outdoors, under the shade of a mango tree and a temporary wooden shelter.
In 2009 God connected our son David to a friend called Br. Brian Stokes, who became interested in helping the Children’s Ministry. We worked hand in hand with Br. Brian Stokes to shift the school from under the mango tree to a rented premises, which we partitioned into separate classrooms. Br Stokes generously offered to assist us by raising funds in the UK to support the teachers’ salaries. “Father’s Children Nursery and Primary School” was born. In 2014, Br Brian and his church members also assisted us with fundraising to buy a separate property to house the orphans.
Over time and with the support of generous donors, we have been able to gradually construct permanent shelter for the orphans, and classroom buildings for the Nursery and Primary school around the church premises. We have bought acreage where we hope to be able to expand our school in the future. But we still have much more work to do!
Our Mission
Our vision is to provide quality education and care to empower and foster the spiritual growth of vulnerable and disadvantaged children from the Kalagi community and from other areas.
We strive to:
- Provide a safe home for orphaned and vulnerable children
- Empower vulnerable children through education
- Provide nutritious meals to our students
- Pursue our activities in a way that creates economic opportunities for our community and fosters self-sustainability
- Work with charities and donors seeking to help address child poverty in Uganda.
We are a Born Again Christian Ministry under the Christ our Vision Church. Our Christian spirit inspired us to reach out to the vulnerable and disadvantaged with the love of God, through love and care for the orphans and kids, preaching the good news, and restoring life and hope in our community. We warmly welcome students from all religions and denominations.
Nurturing a new Godly blessed generation (Proverbs 22:6)
Our Model
We started as a fully self-funded project. To maintain the school’s operations and continue to meet the orphans’ care needs, we now operate under a cooperative model:
Our Ministry is responsible for meeting the daily operating costs of the school and boys and girls orphans’ homes – covering food and shelter for the orphans, education costs for our sponsored students (clothing, uniforms, food, books, pens etc) and general administrative costs.
Our Community contributes where they can – some of our parents are able to contribute partially or fully to school fees, which goes towards the school’s running costs.
Our Donors are vital to helping our school grow and be better equipped. We are indebted to Mr Brian Stokes who sponsors our teachers’ salaries. Our other donors have contributed to school improvement projects – such as completing and roofing classrooms, buying classroom equipment and computers, and installing solar lighting.
It remains our goal to be financially self-sustaining, by pursuing projects that help sustain our school and orphans’ home, and create social and economic opportunities in our community. This includes plans for farming projects that can help feed our students and generate income, barter programs where parents can contribute in-kind (eg providing food or skills) in lieu of school fees, and projects that can improve the community (eg community solar charging stations, computer training and water projects).
But we still need help to make our school and orphans’ homes a well equipped, safe and sustainable learning environment. We believe that our valued donors can best help us by contributing toward school and community improvement projects that involve significant up-front costs, which we would not otherwise be able to afford and implement. We also warmly welcome volunteers who are able to contribute time, training or experience to making our school and orphans’ homes better. It is these efforts that can help our school to grow and become self-sufficient.
Our Church
Pastor Samuel Ssekirime and Mrs Robinah Ssekirime have been on the journey of salvation together since owning their retail shop in 1988, signposted “Mukama Ye Bazibwe” (Praise the Lord). Through their journey they have been members of the Namirembe Christian fellowship near Kyebando, joined fellowship under Trinity Church, and preached to the sick and hospitalised. Prayer finally brought them to Kalagi village to establish a new Church and Children’s Ministry under the name “Christ our Vision Community Church”.
The Church started officially on 9 March 2003, with fellowships held in the classroom of a small school in Kalagi. After a year of renting this classroom, God provided funds and we bought land to build a new church. Fellowships were held in the open under a mango tree until there were means to buy timber and construct a simple, half-roofed structure. After a couple of years, we worked with our church members to start building a brick structure – people pitched in to help to lay bricks and slowly but surely the church started emerging. We thank the team of members from Ggaba community church who helped us complete the brick structure.
The Church is now built and roofed but we are still struggling with putting in doors, windows, floor and plastering.
