In January we bought 318 school uniforms from a single tailor in Nsawam. Ordering in one batch brought the unit cost down from GH₵96 to GH₵78, which across the whole cohort saved a little over GH₵5,700 — roughly nine more girls in school for a term. On a spreadsheet it was obviously the right decision.
By the third week of term, four of our mentors had reported the same thing from four different schools. The uniforms were slightly wrong. Not badly made, but uniformly wrong in the same direction: the same shade, the same seam, the same slightly stiff fabric. Every girl wearing one was visibly a scholarship girl, and the other children had worked it out within days.
One of our scholars asked her mother to buy her a second uniform so she could wear it on the days there was an assembly.
We had spent four years telling these girls that receiving support was nothing to be ashamed of, and then we handed them a garment that announced it across a schoolyard. The saving was real. So was the cost, and the cost fell entirely on the girls.
What we changed
From the September term, scholars receive the uniform allowance as a payment to their household, and the family buys from whichever tailor the school's other parents use. It costs us GH₵18 more per girl. It removes the marker entirely.
We also changed something less obvious. Our mentors now ask one standing question at every termly visit: is there anything about the way this support arrives that embarrasses you? That question came directly out of this episode. It has since produced two other changes we would not have thought of, including moving our clinic day away from market day.
Why we are publishing this
Bulk purchasing is a standard recommendation in every efficiency guide written for small charities, and it is usually correct. It was not correct here, and we would not have found out from our own reporting — the spreadsheet showed a saving and nothing else. We found out because four mentors were in four schoolyards and had somewhere to report it.
If you fund us, you paid for that mistake. It seems right that you should be told about it in the same place you are told about the things that worked.
Written by [Author name], Programmes Lead