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2025-03-31-accounts

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Joy of Learning

Trustee Report for the financial year ending 31[st] March 2025.

Joy of Learning present their annual trustee report and accounts for the year ending 31[st] March 2025, and confirm they comply with the requirements of Charities Act 2011.

Joy of Learning was registered with Charity Commission on 7[th] June 2021 and has the legal structure of a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Joy of Learning was officially launched via a Zoom launch night on 22[nd] January 2022.

Objectives

Our objectives, as outlined in our Constitution are:

  1. For the public benefit to advance the education of children who are either current or former residents of Sanyu Babies’ Home and on occasion their siblings or children living in the same household of the primary caregiver in Uganda by providing or assisting in the provision of school fees, relevant educational goods, equipment and materials and food and clothing.

  2. The prevention or relief of poverty or financial hardship in Uganda for the primary caregivers of children who are either current or former residents of Sanyu Babies’ Home by providing or assisting in the provision of education, training, healthcare projects and all the necessary support designed to enable individuals to generate a sustainable income and be self-sufficient in order to independently support the child.

Aims for the Year

When planning the aims and activities for the year, the trustees of Joy of Learning considered and have had due regard to the commission’s public benefit guidance, particularly the specific guidance for charities on the advancement of education and the prevention or relief of poverty.

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Review of activities and achievements

General

Joy of Learning has had another successful year, working hard to meet our objectives and widen our reach. The families we support live across Uganda and we endeavour to visit them four times a year, approximately every three months. We have continued to provide basic food and hygiene support to all of the families we work with. As mentioned later in this report, we have also continued to provide medical support to our families in a number of ways.

Our Educational Sponsorship programme is growing and we are seeing huge benefits of enabling children to access education. We believe it is, quite simply, changing lives. We have been able to partner with four more families this year implementing our Safe Sleep project, and have already seen benefits from providing a safe place to sleep.

We have continued to grow our presence on social media and send out a bi-monthly newsletter to our supporters. Our newsletter mailing list has grown significantly during the past year, particularly thanks to some of the fundraising events like the Amalthea Ensemble’s Tour that have taken place. We are very grateful for the fundraising that has been done for Joy of Learning, and for the significant sum of money raised through our supporters’ efforts. In particular through the Amalthea Ensemble’s Tour, we have been able to widen our network and gain a number of new sponsors and donors.

During the last financial year, we have worked with 28 families in total, an increase of 7 compared to the previous year. At the end of the financial year, we had a further 8 families on our referral list. We will conduct initial visits to these families to assess their needs and partner with them as finances allow in the future. We assess each family’s needs upon partnering with them and re-assess these needs regularly to ensure that tailored support is given to each family. As part of our hygiene support, we provide toothbrushes and toothpaste. To ensure that maximum benefit is reached, each family takes part in a teeth cleaning workshop conducted by our team when receiving these items for the first time. This is to ensure that each family understands how to brush their teeth and have good oral hygiene and why it is important to do so. Occasionally, we also provide basic clothing and shoes to the families we work with. Some of the clothes and shoes are donated to us, and others we purchase in Uganda.

This year we once again chose to fundraise specifically for Christmas so that we were able give the families we work with additional items to help them enjoy the Christmas period and celebrate together as a family. We did this by setting up a JustGiving fundraising page, and also reaching out to our sponsors, giving them the opportunity to donate a small amount towards a gift for their sponsored child. It was the first time we had done this, but we received a positive uptake from sponsors. Thanks to the fundraising, we were able to buy each child a small gift, and also each family a collection of food and drink items to ensure that they could have a feast on Christmas Day. This was definitely one of the highlights of the year for us, and we hope to be able to do something similar next year.

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Medical

In Uganda, it is very common that individuals have to pay for their medical treatment. This means that if you do not have the finances, and therefore cannot afford the consultation or treatment, health can deteriorate quicky. Joy of Learning provides regular medical support such as deworming treatment which is recommended across Uganda. We also provide support with occasional medical needs as and when they arrive.

During the last financial year, we have primarily supported families to access treatment for malaria and bacterial infections. We have provided medical support to some of the caregivers in our families, as well as the children. When supporting a family to access medical care, we ensure that they go to a hospital or visit a medical professional for an initial consultation, and we then support them to access the prescribed treatment and medication. During the last year, we have started working with a Nurse from Sanyu Babies’ Home who on occasion gives advice and helps to facilitate hospital visits for some of the families we work with. A number of the children we support have epilepsy and we enable them to have regular consultations with a Paediatric Neurologist and fund any prescribed medications that are needed. It is hoped that in the future, one of these children will be able to have brain surgery to alleviate seizures but until then he is dependant on regular medication to reduce the number of seizures.

One critical project we undertook during the last year, was working with another organisation – Love Without Boundaries – to facilitate major heart surgery in India for one of the children we support. Joy of Learning did not have the expertise or financial capacity to organise life-saving heart surgery ourselves, but we were able to work with a wonderful organisation who did. We assisted the family to attend appointments in Uganda, worked with them to get birth certificates, passports and visas, assisted the child and his mother to have the necessary vaccinations and items needed for travel, and also ensured that the child remained as healthy as possible in the lead up to the surgery by providing additional food support. Love Without Boundaries then organised the surgery, flights and the hospital care in India. The surgery took place in November 2024, and the child returned home to Uganda in December 2024. We are pleased to say he is now doing very well. We will continue to support this child to attend regular reviews and help the family to monitor his progress. His family had given up hope of ever being able to save their little boy, and now he is running around with his siblings and will soon be able to start school.

Educational Sponsorship

Our Educational Sponsorship programme is growing from strength to strength and we are seeing what a huge difference it is making to the children we support. Through the Amalthea Ensemble Tour our network was significantly widened and we received increased interest in sponsorship during this time. In Uganda, education is a luxury for many families due to its cost. You are not only required to pay for school fees, but you must also pay for school requirements including items like books, pens, pencils, toilet paper and brooms to sweep the compound. Without paying school fees or having the required scholastic materials, a child is unable to fully engage or even attend school. Our programme finds

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sponsors who pay £15 a month which pays for a child’s school fees and associated school requirements.

Children can start school at the age of three. There are three classes in Nursery School (Baby Class, Middle Class and Top Class), seven classes in Primary School (Primary 1 to Primary 7) and six classes in Secondary School (Senior 1 to Senior 6). A child only progresses to the next class after sitting exams at the end of each academic year. If a child has been sent home from school due to school fees not being paid, or if they perform poorly in exams then it is highly likely that they will not be promoted to the next year. This means that in Ugandan schools there is a variety of ages in each class. For example, we currently support two 17year-olds to attend school, one is in Senior 4 and the other is in Primary 4.

At the end of this financial year we had 64 children enabled to access education through sponsorship with Joy of Learning. These children were from 17 different families and attended schools all over Uganda. 26 of the children attended Nursery School, 31 attended Primary School, 4 children attended Secondary School and the remaining 3 students opted for vocational study with the YMCA Comprehensive Institute. Two of the students chose to study Cosmetology and the third chose to study Hotel and Institutional Catering. The vocational courses last two years, and the courses will be completed at the end of 2026. The cost of schooling in Uganda fluctuates significantly depending on the class, location and type of school. For some of our students, their school costs are considerably higher than our average, so they are assigned multiple sponsors as necessary.

Thanks to our Educational Sponsorship programme, we have seen children transform and become almost unrecognisable from their former selves. Many of the children we work with had repeatedly been sent home from school and as a result had very low self-esteem. They could not speak any English despite it being one of Uganda’s national languages, and they completely lacked confidence. These same children are now thriving, confident and talkative children who have big hopes and dreams for their futures. We are truly seeing the power of education and the difference it can make.

Safe Sleep

In December 2023 we ran a pilot study of a new project, Safe Sleep. Many of the families we support do not have a safe place to sleep, particularly the children. We found that although we were enabling children to attend school by finding them educational sponsors, some still had poor attendance due to frequently getting sick, especially with malaria. We found that many of the children we support slept on the dirty ground with limited bedding and usually no mosquito net. We realised that in order to fully support children in their education, we needed to ensure that they were able to have a ‘Safe Sleep’. During the pilot study, we selected two of our families most in need of support. At each home we installed a triple decker bunk bed, complete with mattresses, bedsheets, blankets and mosquito nets. Three months later we re-engaged with the two families to see if their health had been impacted. We were delighted to hear that not one family member had contracted malaria since we installed the beds. This gave us the evidence we needed to progress with the project.

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During the last financial year, we have worked with four more families. Each Safe Sleep was funded through various fundraising events throughout the year. With these four families, there had been several cases of malaria prior to the intervention. All four families received a triple decker bunk bed complete with good quality mattresses, blankets, bedsheets and mosquito nets. One of the families also received a bed for the caregivers complete with mattress, blanket, bedsheets and mosquito net. All of the children were understandably very excited about having their very own bed for the first time, with one child telling us he was going to “sleep like a king”. The overwhelming emotion was always one of relief from the caregivers that their children were going to be able to sleep safely. Each time we visit post-intervention, we engage with the families and find out how things are going. We have seen a notable decrease in malaria cases, and the children have told us they now sleep much better and consequently can also learn better. When we visit, we always check the mosquito nets for wear and tear, and replace nets as necessary. We plan to continue to work through more of our families as and when we can, providing them with a Safe Sleep, and in turn continuing to enable them to access their education.

Fundraising

A number of fundraisers have been held this year to raise money for Joy of Learning, some organised by the charity and others organised by generous supporters. Funds have been raised by our wonderful supporters in a variety of ways including a film night, a half marathon, and even a sponsored head-shave. One child chose to run a marathon over the month of March (2025) and was sponsored by her family and friends to do so. The Amalthea Ensemble chose to put on an entire tour to raise money for Joy of Learning. They had eleven different concerts around the UK, all to raise money and awareness for the charity.

We organised a Birthday Quiz and a Birthday Challenge to celebrate our 3rd Birthday in June 2024. Our Birthday Quiz gave us the opportunity to officially launch our Safe Sleep project and start raising funds for that, as well as celebrating our big personal milestone with our supporters. Our Birthday challenge was to ‘travel’ 4,106 miles, which is the distance ‘as the crow flies’ from our UK base in Cardiff, to our Uganda base in Kampala. Our supporters noted down the number of miles they walked/ran/cycled/swam over the course of 7 days, and we added them to our total. We had supporters from several different countries get involved and although we didn’t quite reach 4,106 miles we did get very close as we reached 3936.98 miles!

The fundraising events collected donations in cash, electronically by card reader, and some people made direct bank transfers. In total, £11,350.48 has been added to Joy of Learning’s funds by fundraising events during this last financial year.

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Ugandan Crafts

During the last financial year, we have started to explore selling Ugandan handmade crafts as a fundraising venture. We have started to work with wonderful craft vendors in Uganda, one of whom is actually the main caregiver for one of our families. We investigated the implications of selling crafts. We applied for an EORI number so we could declare any crafts we were importing and pay customs duty on them. We know that as a charity we are exempt from VAT and we checked that our trading turnover is below the HMRC defined limit to comply with the small trading tax exemption.

Financial Review

On 1[st ] April 2023, our charity bank account was opened, and we were able to start operating fully. We now receive donations from across the world in a variety of ways such as bank transfer, PayPal, cash, and cheque.

At the beginning of this financial year, the charity’s funds amounted to £813.90. Our total income for the past financial year was £26,791.60 with funds coming from 4 different avenues. £10,323.51 of our total income was from sponsorship payments. The remainder of the income was from fundraising efforts (£11,350.48), regular donations (£390) and one-off donations (£4727.61).

The total sum of outgoings for the past financial year was £26,933.96. These funds were spent on the ground in Uganda supporting charitable activities such as food, hygiene and medical support for the families we work with. Funds were also spent on educational support including school fees and school requirements, and for costs associated with our Safe Sleep project. In addition, money was spent on general running of the charity, purchasing necessary supplies both in the UK and in Uganda. At the end of the financial year, the charity had a total of £671.54. In the future, we plan to put a reserves policy into place so that in times of economic uncertainty, the charity would be able to stay afloat whilst plans are put in place to stabilise the finances.

Towards the end of March 2025, we were approved by HMRC, and we submitted our first Gift Aid claim on 31[st] March 2025. We are sure the addition of gift aid will be hugely beneficial for the charity’s financial status and we are in the process of reaching out to our regular donors requesting the completion of a gift aid form. Once we have caught up with any backdated claims, we will be able to regularly submit claims to HMRC.

Future plans

We plan to draw up a number of essential policies and update the Safeguarding Policy we already have in place.

We hope to continue to grow our Educational Sponsorship programme and enable more children to attend school, as well as spreading awareness of Joy of Learning in general. We would like to widen Joy of Learning’s network by speaking about the charity at different events, clubs and groups, in the hope that this generates future fundraising opportunities.

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We hope to continue to implement our Safe Sleep project and work with more of our families providing them with a Safe Sleep as funds allow.

Though we have partnered with seven more families this year, we hope to continue to be able to partner with families as we still have a waiting list of families referred to us that need support.

Currently, we are a registered charity in the UK, and we partner with Sanyu Babies’ Home, a registered organisation in Uganda. Over the next year, we plan to explore the possibility of registering as a non-governmental organisation in Uganda, as for us to grow as a charity, we believe this to be a necessity.

In the longer term, we hope to work more with caregivers regarding their income. We want to work with caregivers to explore avenues to increase their income by setting up a new business, mentoring their current business or the like. This would mean that in the future, some of our families might become more self-sufficient.

Trustees, Structure, Governance and Management

Joy of Learning is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation and is governed by its trustees. Joy of Learning has had three trustees that have served throughout the entire financial year; Emily Cheer, Hollie Glanfield and Angharad Denham. Amy Mason has continued to serve as Publicity Officer, and Barbara Nankya Mutagubya as In-Country Coordinator. Throughout the financial year, the Joy of Learning team grew significantly. We welcomed three new trustees; Jackie Fuidge (June 2024), Chandani Patel (July 2024) and Lucy Hobbs (January 2025). We also welcomed two new members to the team; Rhian Wilkes (June 2024) and Mckenzie Davis (July 2024). Rhian helps primarily with our Ugandan Crafts and Mckenzie helps with our Educational Sponsorship programme. All five trustees and team members were appointed by a resolution at a meeting where a quorum of trustees were present. The trustees are responsible for the overall management of Joy of Learning and meet regularly on Zoom with other team members. All trustees and team members give their time freely and no expenses have been paid to them. Emily Cheer, Angharad Denham and Hollie Glanfield are all among the first trustees of the charity, having been appointed as the charity began, and their first term to serve is 5 years. After 5 years, they can be re-instated for another 3 years should they wish, or they can step down as a trustee. When selecting new trustees, current trustees will be making their decision considering the skills, knowledge and experience needed. New trustees will be appointed for a term of 3 years by a resolution at a trustee meeting.

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Safeguarding

Joy of Learning has a safeguarding policy drawn up that has been signed by two trustees/team members. Joy of Learning has an appointed Welfare Officer (Barbara Nankya Mutagubya) who is responsible for reporting any safeguarding concerns to the appropriate parties in Uganda. Any trustee, team member or volunteer who will be working directly with any children and vulnerable adults, is required to show us a valid DBS or police check.

Volunteers

During the last financial year, we have had 2 individuals volunteer their time who were not already part of the Joy of Learning team. One volunteer helped out with the organisation and selling at craft stalls at the Amalthea Tour, and the other supported some family visits in Uganda. The volunteer who spent time in Uganda was required to show proof of DBS / police check, as they were interacting with children and vulnerable adults that we support.

As we begin to grow over the next few years, we hope to increase the number of volunteers both in the UK and in Uganda.

Conclusion

Joy of Learning has grown considerably in the past year, and we have been able to build on our Educational Sponsorship programme as well as launching our Safe Sleep project. We have significantly widened our network and look forward to building on this in the future. We are so grateful to everyone who has raised money for us, and who decided to become an Educational Sponsor with Joy of Learning. We see lives transform through the power of education and we love watching our families thrive. We have big plans for the next financial year, and are excited to see what is to come in the future.

Admlnlstrative Details Joy of Learning Registered Charity Number: 1194700 Registered address: 8 Hampton Road, Cardiff, CF14 4AH wvthi.joyoflearnin8U8.com Declaratlons The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees, report above. Signed on behalf of the charltvs trustees. Sl8nature..... AfL fv41.............. .... .................. ... . kLo LL!.¢........&..L.A.w.f IEL Position..... Date...... as.....o..i.....a.ts

CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WAIES Jov of Lo•mlna 1194700 Receipts and payments accounts CC16a For th• pe￿0d 01.04.2024 To 31.03.2025 Section A Receipts and payments Unmtri¢ted fun toth• rAr••t Rèstrtcte funth Endowment fund• tothi rn•Tr•te toth• n••r••t£ to th• ng•rn•t e Total lund8 Last yoar A1 R￿fj1 Edutlionai Sw)9cthIp 10,324 10.324 R8gul8r Donakni Ow Oft tjonath Sub tot•1 (Grn￿ incom8 for AR) 26,791 X,792 A2 A•￿t •nd Inv••trn•nt ••lM, l•w tsbl•l. Sub total Totsl rnc•lpts 26,792 792 A3 P m•nts .•34 Sub tot•1 A4 A•$•t Ind Inve•lm•nt ur¢hO•￿. ••• tsbl• Sub tot•1 28.934 N•t Olrecelpt￿(P9yfft•ntsJ AS Tran•l•rn bgtwo•n fur￿¥ A6 Cash fundl la•t y￿r •nd Cash funds thls y•arend 142 142 814 872 672 CCKX R1 aeuunts ISSI 2810112028

Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period Unrestricted fvnd# to nthartst £ Rtstricted fund• to n••mt £ Endowment fund• 'Ivrie¥ 81 Cash funds Total cash funds 672 Unr••trl¢t•d fvnd• R••trl¢t•d fund• to rwr••t£ Endowment fund• to nMr••t ¢ Dotalls Fund to wh6ch Curr•nt vilu• Do1311s Co•t IoMity)•ll F¥nd to whlch Curr•nt v*lu• on•1 Details B4 A•s•ts r•tsln•d for th• charlty'• own u•• 111- Fund to whlch Amount du• Whpn du• on•1 Details BS Llabllltle• SKJned by one or tsvo truste￿ beholf ol 011 the trusts s￿nature Prirrt N8m• Data of roval Ao IE CCXX R2 xcovnts ISSI 2810112026

CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examinerfs report on the accounts Section A Independent Examiner's Report Report to the trustsesl members of Joy of Leaming On accounts for the year ended Charity no lif any) 31. March 2025 1194700 Set out on pages I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity {'the Trusv) for the year ended Responsibilities and As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation basis of report of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 {"the Act"). I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carying out my examinalion, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charrty Commission under section 145(51(b) of the Act. I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention (other than thal disclosed below ') in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any matenal respect.. accounting records were not kept in accordance WFth section 130 of the Act or the accounts do not accord with the accounting records Independent examinerfs statement I have no concems and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper underslanding of the accounls to be reached. Please delete the words in the brackets if they do not apply. Signed: Dats: 21 January 2026 Name- Paul Burnell Relevant professional qualificationls) or body (if any): Associate of the Chartered Managemenl InstitLrte Address: 69 Velindre Road Whrtchurch Cardiff CF14 2TF IER October 2018