This Easter I’m heading to Uganda for 2 weeks to help on a project at Wiggins Primary School to build four teachers’ homes, so that the teachers can be relocated from the classrooms they are now occupying. This will allow them to be used once again as classrooms! The main building work will be conducted by local skilled labourers but I will be part of a small team helping and hopefully not hindering whilst honing my bricklaying skills. As the school will still be in operation I may spend a bit of time working with teachers too.

This is a Government Primary School near to Kumi Centre but serving a mainly rural community to the South of Kumi. It has just over one thousand students. The school has twenty teachers but only thirteen homes, some of which are in a very dilapidated condition. This means that six classrooms are being used to house teachers. The consequence of this is that some of the students are being taught in dilapidated classrooms from 1940’s, in which lessons are disrupted by poor weather. Our project is to build eight new teachers’ homes over three years and if possible, to undertake some repairs and refurbishment to improve the condition for the other homes. This will release six classrooms back for teaching, enabling the school to stream each year group and reduce class sizes.

Ensuring teachers are well housed has direct benefit to the children’s education, ensuring teachers are available without the worry of coping with inadequate housing.

We are not talking luxury here, as you can see from the plan the row of 4 homes will each have 2 rooms for sleeping and a living room. Food is usually cooked outside over charcoal and there are shared latrines and washing areas. To build all 4 homes will cost £29,000 - over half has already been raised.

We will also be visiting other projects such as Ngora School for the Deaf and may visit to the Katanga slum area in Kampala to see the work of Hope for Life.

As normal, I have already paid all my travel and living expenses (and for the safari at the end) so any money donated here goes directly to the building project. If you wanted to donate for any of their other work such as the Kumi Porridge Fund (£20 pays for 400 mugs of nutritious porridge for primary leaving certificate students) or chicken project please let me know as I will be taking cash to support these excellent initiatives. Donations have enabled an increase from two schools to four and Mission Direct are now funding 400 bowls of porridge each day. This is £20 per day or about £4,800 per year. That is just short of 100,000 bowls of porridge in a year. It is well known that hunger is a major barrier to education. Since this initiative started the exam results at Bazaar School have improved significantly making them the better performer in the district and similar improvements and student retention are hoped for at other schools.

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