For its 60th anniversary celebrations, Salisbury's fun hospital radio station - Radio Odstock - has been granted an FM licence to broadcast live around the Salisbury area for three days, May 25-27 – and Child of Hope will be there!

Bex and Moses popped into the studio for an interview after their fantastic visit to Wyndham Park Primary School, which also features during the broadcast. If you live in or near Salisbury, you can hear them both on bank holiday Monday, May 27, but it will probably be early in the morning!

A fun 3-hour Zumbathon will take place in Lytchett Matravers, Dorset on June 1 to raise funds jointly for Child of Hope and Help for Heroes! 

A Zumbathon is an extra long Zumba fitness class charity event with a party feel. Big thanks to instructors Tiffany Lawrence and Jacki Carroll for hosting the event.

Want to join in? Just e-mail Tiffany - tickets are £10 per person (includes a goodie bag) and proceeds will be shared between the two charities. There will also be a raffle, sports massage, cake sale and more!

Usually in Africa, NGOs and charities work with mothers and have pretty much ignored fathers. There are many reasons for this, particularly in slums where many dads have simply given up hope, spend much of their day drunk... and can have several wives and several children.  

At Child of Hope we’ve always felt uncomfortable with this, because we know the difference that a great father can have on the family. Philip Lotimong, our welfare manager, has been keen for several years to start a fathers meeting each month, but didn’t know know where to start. Many people said that the men wouldn’t attend, that they’re not interested in looking after their families. 

But Philip refused to give up and we have made a start. All fathers of Child of Hope children were invited to attend the first meeting, although expectation was low about who would actually turn up. It was therefore a big surprise to find nearly 60 dads heading towards the school building! They were keen to get started and really appreciated that they had their very own meeting. They wanted to learn how to be better dads, discuss common problems and challenges and, when they left the meeting, many went out into the community encouraging parents to send their children to school.  

Now they will meet every month and we’re looking forward to seeing the lives of the children being impacted by educated and caring fathers!

Brave Paula Stubbs – who says she is afraid of heights – is about to do a tandem parachute jump to raise funds for Child of Hope!

On June 8 she will leap out of a plane for her first-ever time... and it's all to help raise funds for our work with the kids of Namatala slum. 

She said: "I love what Child of Hope is doing... but as for the jump – I'm trying not to think about it!"

If you'd like to help her on her way by donating to her target, she has set up a JustGiving page where you can donate online safely by debit/credit card. Her money will go towards buying much-needed playground equipment for the school.

Just announced... the new projects we want to achieve during 2013... from pig-farming to playground equipment, with costs ranging from £560 to £60,000! They all have one thing in common – to produce vital social impact for the young slum children we care for. Some are about nutrition, others about well-being, all will help us bring about massive change in their lives.

Click here to see the full list and costs. And if you would like to fund a project, or get involved in fundraising for one, please contact the Child of Hope UK office.

Matthew Thorbes will be pounding the streets for Child of Hope in the BUPA London 10,000 on May 27... thanks Matthew!

If you could sponsor him - now, wouldn't that encourage him as he goes out training every evening? You can donate via his JustGiving page.

Matthew - who hopes to raise £500 for our work with slum children - said another goal is to set a new Personal Best for the 10,000m, beating his previous record of 45.33 - less easy than it was before a six-month-old baby in the house!

We have launched a fun new video to show how our school in the slum will soon benefit from solar power!

Currently we have just one panel but – thanks to our friends at Young Philanthropy (YP) – we will soon have a much bigger system to power everything at the school. Then we won't be subject to extremely common power cuts, nor have to use a generator! Click here to watch the video on our website, or on YouTube. Or download the video from Vimeo to view on your PC... and show your friends! It's just 2.5 minutes long.

YP is a new initiative to introduce young professionals to a career of giving and develop their potential as future philanthropists, with the support of experienced philanthropists or partners within their firms. Thanks for your help, YP!

To see all the Child of Hope videos on YouTube, click here.

During Fairtrade Fortnight 2013, the children in Year 3 at Christchurch Junior School, Dorset, held a very efective Fairtrade cake sale to raise funds for Child of Hope. Here's what Sophie and Kelly from 3VD said...

"The reason we had the sale was because we wanted to raise money for Child of Hope School in Uganda. After some market research, each class chose a different cake to make. There were cookies, peppermint creams, fairy cakes and rice crispy cakes. We had the sale in our new hall on Friday 1^st March and sold so many delicious cakes to the rest of the school and our parents. 

"We are very proud because we raised £560 for Child of Hope which we learned is enough to send five children in Uganda to school for a whole year! Thank you everyone for giving us your donations."

It’s fair to say that Red Nose Day has become something of a national institution since its launch in 1988. Everyone has great fun while raising money to help change countless lives across the UK and Africa... great formula. We love it. Thousands of people do something funny for money... at home, at work, in schools and, well... just about everywhere. They even do it on TV, with the BBC giving celebrities and comedians an entire evening to entertain the nation whilst urging them to donate generously. www.comicrelief.com/about-us/red-nose-day.

Child of Hope doesn't have a specific day each year to raise money - we have many volunteers who are tirelessly fundraising every day of the year to ensure that the families in the Namatala slum are getting the help and support that they need - so once you've taken off your red nose and washed out the red dye from the kids hair - have a think how you could help raise some much needed funds for Child of Hope!

Here are some ideas to get you started... cake Sales and coffee mornings, quiz nights, sponsored events (bike rides, walks, swimathons, climb a moountain)... for help click here: http://www.childofhopeuganda.org/how-you-can-help/fundraising/

And of course - we'd love to find out what you've all been doing – so send in your photos and we can all see what great things are going on!