|
|||
Busoco SchoolBusoco School is being built on a
remote mainland peninsula over an hour’s drive from Kampala
to cater for the
primary schooling needs of 2 local communities.
When this school is completed, it will initially
give over 200 children
the chance to learn that they have so far been denied.
No-one knows how many children there are in
the two communities (with some estimates exceeding 500). The
mainland community currently
have the impractical option of sending their children on a 10 kilometre
walk to
school and the Sowe Island community have no access to schooling
facilities
whatsoever. For the children of The
school project itself is
being managed by Kate, one of Lessons for Life’s
in-country
representatives, who has got the project moving with a grant from the
US
Embassy. However,
further funding is
required to equip the school and to run it – the least
glamorous and most
difficult funding to find. This
is where Lessons for Life
comes in. We would
like to raise several
thousand pounds per year to support this project.
We don’t yet know the exact level of
funding
required to run the school properly as this depends on what funding
comes from the
Ugandan government and from the local community (through school fees). However,
we do know that our
support will be essential to give the children the chance of a proper
education
and will be excellent value for money – for primary school
projects we aim to make
a difference for between £30 and £50 per child per
year. We
can provide some support from
regular donations we already receive, however another £300
per month in regular donations would make a huge difference. Every little helps
– we would rather receive
donations that can be comfortably afforded and continued for a long time. If you or anyone you know would like to support this project please use the following form (and tick the “Directly fund schools or programs” box: We are also hoping to be
able to provide c. £10,000 for
equipment and start up costs. We will put some of the one-off income
that we
have already received towards this, however if you or anyone you know
would
like to help with the setup costs for this school, please click here to
make a
one-off donation. Visit to Sowe island
and
Our VSO volunteer went along with medics from
another charity (Hope
Clinic) to spend a day on Several Mzungus got on a boat and travelled to Sowe Island to work with the children. The inhabitants of Sowe Island are not allowed to grow crops as this affects the ownership rights of the land. It is purely supported by the fishing industry. It was a very calm stretch of water when we set off at 9:00am. We arrived on the island and set up in their community hall which is used as a church, school and meeting centre. On entering parents registered their children for the school and then had the children photographed. They then moved down the line to the medics who gave all the children free health drugs – de-worming tablets, vitamin A tablets and anti fungal tablets (no shots!). Out of the 80
pupils who registered for school and the 92 children treated only 3
mothers
had up-to-date medical records. As we were about to visit the village
on the other side of the road the heavens opened with an amazing show
of thunder and lightning. We were trapped inside the hut with half the
village so we entertained ourselves with songs and the few
boarding-school educated children reading books that Kate had collected
and transported from When there was a lull in the storm, we crossed over to the mainland to visit the school which has recently had the roof and guttering fixed so the rain water collects in a massive water butt. This water is used for the pupils to drink and to water the women's collective vegetable patch. On a follow up visit to the island, one of the children was given treatment for an eye infection without which they would have lost sight in one eye. |
|
||
