Railway School Project

With Secondary and Tertiary education in Uganda being fee paying, most students will never be in a position to pursue an academic education. Therefore, it is critical that they attain skills to ensure they can generate some income for not only themselves but, all too often, other dependents. Although not on any national curriculum, the Railway School has been offering optional vocational classes to some of the older students to ensure they leave school with more capability and options. These classes are very popular and although there are already some sewing machines, ovens etc, with more equipment and teaching capacity, then more children could be equipped with vocational skills. Olivia, the headmistress who has been pioneering these classes, has also been organising for the students to have a chance to attend local fairs where they learn basic business skills necessary for the students to sell their goods at a profit.

Lessons for Life have committed from mid 2007 to provide funding to Railway School under a programme entitled “Basic Vocational and Business skills Development Programme”. Under this programme LfL will channel approximately £4,000 over 2 years to purchase more equipment and increase training capacity for both vocational and business skills.

As well as training fees, the Plan includes Vocational Units to be enhanced as follows:

• Tailoring - Sewing Machines (x5), Cloth Materials, Scissors, Threads, and maintenance costs.
• Bakery - Baking Stoves (x2), tins, flour and other ingredients.
• Handcraft - Fibres, Beads, dye, seeds, needles, hooks and knives etc
• Weaving and Knitting - Knitting threads, hooks, needles and handlooms
• Mushroom Growing - Construction of a shade unit, seeds, husks, transport.

Beyond the equipment and training to produce products, the programme will ensure that students have the capability to sell those products. Business skills training is planned to cover equipment (pens, flip charts etc) and Professional tuition on:

• Entrepreneurship
• Marketing
• Customer care
• Basic Book Keeping

We will have a local contact Jan Bell, who is based in Kampala, to help Olivia with the project and provide updates to all at Lessons for Life. We will post updates as we commence this project.