We have just reached the fine total of £400 raised by using this scheme when buying goods online.

If you shop online please register to raise funds for ACE at no cost to you.

Click here for further details.

The 2008 Cash Prize Raffle winners were drawn at the trustees' meeting.

The winners were -

The raffle made a profit for ACE of £294. Thank you to everyone who took part.

They did a fantastic job and I was proud of them, all I had done was show them a video suggested a few ideas and they did the rest.

Twelve students from Minami High School are also writing to Mukibugu school children as part of a pen pal project I have initiated here. A few of the students even talked to Median and Alan from Mukibugu on the phone in Japanese recently. Now that was a special moment, an international call from a distant land for the kids at Mukibugu and for the students here as Japanese came through the loud speaker all they could do was smile.

It looks like ACE has a friend in the Far East.

By the end of the day they had raised 29,373 yen, which equates to about £205 in sterling.

We have recently received several donations and money raised by individuals in various ways.

Two local schools raised money for ACE at their carol services. Heamoor Primary School have donated £120 and Nancledra Primary School £447.

Thank you all very much.

Our collectors were out in Penzance, accompanied by 2 daleks, on a late night shopping evening. They collected £81.

The Mounts Bay Singers presented a concert in aid of ACE at Gulval Parish Church on Saturday 8th November 2008.

For details click here.

David Epidu, ACE's representative in Uganda (left) has recently been visiting the schools around Kisoro and checking the progress of the work currently going on,

As you can see it is the rainy season in Uganda.

He was accompanied by his assistant, Mandela. (right)

Mandela also acts as driver when ACE representatives visit.

One of the main problems facing the schools which ACE supports is with latrines. As we improve the classrooms, more children attend, so the latrines get filled faster.

This picture shows the pit being dug for a new set of latrines at Nyarusunzu school.

Our current work is costing about £5,400. New latrines are also being built at Nyakabaya school and teachers' accommodation is nearly completed at Bukazi.

At the recent ACE trustees' meeting there was a long discussion about latrines.

The latrines illustrated here are the simplest type, known as 'long drop' latrines. They are literally a big pit with a building over the top to provide privacy.

A newer type of latrine is called 'EcoSan'. This provides for the separation of urine and faeces. The solid matter is therefore drier to start with and it can be dried further quite quickly. Mixed with wood ash, it can be used as a valuable fertilizer.

These latrines are much more environmentally friendly, but are more expensive to construct. We are proposing to construct our first EcoSan latrines - a block of three - at Rurembwe school. The project will cost about £2,000.

It is important that the users of EcoSans are properly trained in their use. So there will be a trainer at the school and the block will be used for teaching pupils and teachers from the neighbouring schools when we build more in the future.

If you want to learn a bit more about EcoSan latrines click here.

David has also been checking the schools' water storage tanks.

This one, at Nyakabaya school, has had a new tap house installed with a locked door to prevent the water being stolen.

This is the teachers' accommodation building under construction at Bukazi school.

When completed it will provide rooms for two teachers.

The ACE financial year has just finished and we have received record receipts of £40,017.22. This was more than double the 2006/2007 total of £19,507.

We are very grateful to all who have worked so hard and to all who have given.

During the year we have spent £36,791.93 on our projects at the Ugandan schools. The balance in hand is awaiting further money for our next project.

The biggest categories of expenditure were as follows -

The financial year 2008-2009 has started with a bang. Angela has collected another cheue for £2,000 from Penwith College and the cream tea held on 7th September raised £310.

ACE has moved well ahead in 1st place in the International Children's Charity section on the Charity Portal website. We are in 2nd place in the overall classification and have over 12,000 votes.

In case you forgot to vote when you entered the site you can click on the orange button here.

After you have voted, click 'Statistics' then 'Top 10 Voted' and you will see the Top Ten of all the affiliated charities.

The next challenge will take a while. The charity in first place has over 25,000 votes so it will take a long time for ACE to become number one.

We have recently completed the partitioning of a large classroom to make two smaller ones.

You can see pictures by clicking here.

ACE has been seeking contributions from several charitable trusts who are known to support the sort of work we do.

The first donation we received was £500 from The Calleva Foundation.

We have now also received £1,000 from The Bower Trust.

The donations are earmarked for desks for the schools and we are very grateful to the trustees of both trusts for supporting ACE.

ACE held a collection day at Land's End on Tuesday 5th August.

This picture shows ACE trustee, Roger Drew, with a new member of the ACE fundraising team.

Further details, and more photos, are on our Fundraising page.

The Open Gardens Day was held in Newmill on Sunday 6th July with a record 8 gardens on show. The rain held off for most of the afternoon although there were a couple of heavy showers.

There was also an art exhibition in the Jamieson Library which benefitted ACE. The participating artists were Margaret Chinn, Meg Jenkins and Pam Furby.

Our latest building project has recently been completed.

Click here for details and pictures.

We are grateful to Mr and Mrs Sandy of Wheal Darlington, Long Rock, who recently opened their garden to the public on two days, in aid of ACE.

£414 was raised from admission fees and the sale of wooden garden items

In December 2007 we were delighted to announce that ACE had received a very large donation. The local donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, gave £5,000 to the funds. We were able to claim Gift Aid amounting to £1,400 on the donation, boosting it to £6,400.

We are extremely grateful to the donor and the trustees decided that the money should be spent at the Gitenderi primary school.

The school had a partially-built double classroom block. The building was originally funded by the Uganda Wildlife Authority, but has been standing unfinished for some time because the builder went off with the money. Nothing could be done to complete it for a while because it was the subject of litigation.

When our builder, Paul, completed the new classrooms at Nyarusunzu (see below), we moved him and his team to Gitenderi and they commenced work. He takes his own craftsmen but uses local village labour.

It cost about £4,000 to complete the project, which required provision of windows and doors, plastering and painting.

They made good progress and project was finished during April 2008.

The school also needs another double classroom block to be built.

When asked how they are raising so much money, George Yates, from the College, replied -

Our money comes solely from one source, namely the parties that the Student Association hold at Club 2K. These are usually have a fancy dress theme and, even though we charge a low entry fee and give away hundreds in fancy dress prizes, we still manage to make a fair amount of money from them.

This is partly because the owner of Club 2K, Viv Evans, has been very generous in regard to the financial terms upon which she hosts the parties. So, we've got a partnership comprising ACE, Penwith College Student Association and Club 2K - three small organisations combining to add to the sum of human happiness!

Incidentally, four of our students - Imogen Rutherford, Charlotte Nicholls, Chloe Nicholls and Rebecca Tonkin - have been to Uganda and worked with ACE.

I hope you know that at these parties I'm taking the money on the door and have to put up with a lot of argy bargy and don't get to bed till 4am - and sometimes afterwards am at College at 9am. As it happens, I don't mind late nights!

We are most grateful to George and the students, and to Viv Evans, and glad to hear that they all have fun whilst raising the funds.

The students he mentioned went on the visit to Uganda in 2006 when they were pupils of Mounts Bay School.

Angela Peake, the founder of ACE and chairman of the trustees, made a trip to Uganda with her husband, Vic, in February 2008.

Eden Quayle's mother, Sachiko, went with them.

This picture shows (left to right) Vic and Angela Peake, Eden Quayle and ACE's representative in Uganda, David Epidu.

They had a busy programme, visiting all the schools which ACE supports. They were checking the work that has been carried out and assessing the needs for the future.

They took a large amount of material for the schools.

Also, each school was presented with a Cornish St. Piran's flag.

This picture shows Eden Quayle with pupils at Nyarusunzu in November.

The new classroom block, which is partially built, can be seen in the background.

Because of the very poor standard of the teachers' accommodation at Nyarusunzu, it was decided to use one of the rooms for this purpose until we can get teachers' quarters built.

Eden took this picture on 15th December, showing that rapid progress had been made.

The 200 Club, which we started in July 2006, has proved very successful. By the end of 2007 it had raised just over £2,000 for ACE.

By Autumn 2007 we had over 200 numbers sold. However, about sixty numbers were purchased as Christmas gifts in 2006. They entered their first draw in January 2007 and their last in December 2007. Only a few of these have been renewed.

That means that our numbers are now down to 164 which reduces the prize fund, and the amount of money raised by ACE.

Please try to enrol some new participants so that we can get back to 200. You can obtain more details and download an application form, by clicking here.

St. Hilary School have been raising funds for ACE during the current school year. Prior to the Christmas 2007 period they had raised just over £1,400.

Their school choir sang Christmas carols at the Wharfside shopping centre in Penzance on Saturday 15th December and collected for ACE. Unfortunately it was bitterly cold so they couldn't perform for as long as planned, but they collected £87. With other events during the festive season they have earned a total of £336. They have several more events planned for 2008.

Nancledra School sang carols at the Tesco store at Carbis Bay on Wednesday 19th December. They wore their nativity play costumes and sang inside the store, right under the heaters. They have also given the proceeds of their Christmas carol concerts to ACE. The total they raised was £327.

Mounts Bay School raised £145 for ACE at various Christmas events.The money will be spent on desks at Rukongi Primary School.

Pendeen School have donated £182 which has been earmarked for new desks at Bukazi School.

We are very grateful to all four schools for their support.

We received a cheque for £35 from Silvertree Engineering of Truro.

Supporter, Martin Trathen, collected the money from his workmates.

Charles Etoru has sent us an interesting article from the New Vision newspaper. The article contains a lot of information about Ugandan primary schools.

To read it click here.

Currently two of the schools which ACE supports have female headteachers. They are at Rukongi and Nyakabaya.

Two sponsored events have taken place during August 2007.

Click here for details.

We enrolled ACE into easyfundraising on 9th May 2007, enabling supporters to raise money for us whilst shopping online.

Payments are now coming in. The first one was a £15 donation from Direct Line Insurance when someone purchased pet cover. Other smaller amounts have come from Amazon and other companies.

Thank you to those who have signed up. If you would like to know more about the scheme please click here.

David Epidu

ACE's representative in Uganda, David Epidu, sends a monthly report to the ACE committee.

In his April 2007 report he wrote -

When at Kisoro District met various Heads and advised them to have a routine collection of stone and keep the stones around the school compound, such that if there is any chance for any of the eight schools supported by the A.C.E. getting any help, we should not be running up and down looking for the stone, this should be the contribution for the community.

They all accepted the idea and said that they would all have a routine collection of stones and keep them around the school compound.

Numbers in the 200 Club have dropped this year. This is mainly because subscriptions which were given as gifts to friends have not been renewed.

Please consider buying more numbers, either for yourself, or as gifts to friends.

Click here for details and to download an application form.

The mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest are making a steady recovery.

Click here to read the article from The Times.

A young lady called Hannah Westren, who is 11 years old, recently donated to ACE a jar of coins she had been saving from her pocket money. They added up to £19.17.

The ACE trustees have decided to make the gift up to £21 and purchase a desk and bench seat for St. Joseph School with Hannah's gift.

The desk will be marked as a gift from Hannah with a small plaque.

These desks are designed to seat two pupils but are often occupied by three or four.

They are normally used indoors but this class was taking place outside because of the lack of classrooms.

Lots more desks are currently needed at most of our schools. If you would like donate one click here for details.

For donation of £21, you could have a desk with your name on it. Or you could donate a gift in the name of a friend and have their name on it.

We are very grateful to the gentleman from Weymouth who recently bought a desk named for his granddaughter.

The school at Nyarusunzu was visited for the first time by ACE representatives in October 2006.

The needs of the school are great and it was decided that the first priority should be to provide a water storage tank and guttering, which will cost about £1,300.

The project began in February 2007 and was completed a month later. Click here for more information.