Help Kisaabwa Village Build Their School-Phase II

My goal is to raise funds to support the construction of two much needed additional buildings on the Angels Park Education Centre Primary School campus in Kisaabwa Village, Uganda

I just returned a few weeks ago from a month living in Kisaabwa Village and volunteering as a staff member for Angels Park Education Centre (APEC). It was so exciting to see, firsthand, the buildings that were built this past year on campus. Thank you so much donors and supporters that made it happen! The students are very serious about school and are so very thankful for the opportunity to attend school. They love their classrooms!

It was a life changing month! I learned so much, I know so much more and I absolutely fell in love with the school, their mission, the students, the staff, the village… The infusion of more curricular resources and additional classroom spaces is making a big difference, not only in the numbers they serve but also increasing teacher’s ability to effectively teach and support their students' learning. I was truly impressed at the reading abilities of many of the children and their joy of getting to read children’s books filled my heart everytime I got to experience it.

Angels Park is facing two critical needs at this point, the most glaring need is for an additional nursery classroom, followed closely by the need for teacher housing. Picture this, a single classroom space about 12’ X 30’ with two teachers and roughly 85 students ages 3-6 years old, nursery school to kindergarten age, all packed in, shoulder to shoulder. That describes Angels Park's current nursery classroom. The two teachers, typically one on each end of the classroom, are each responsible for two distinct grade/age levels at a time. It is crazy crowded. Amazingly, it’s not a chaotic mass of wiggling bodies when you walk into the room because the children are so well behaved, but educationally it is very limiting. There is lots of social and academic development time and opportunities lost because there is no room for learning activities or movement. Students spend half their in class time waiting while the teacher guides the other level they are responsible for through a lesson. On top of that, their student numbers at the preschool and kindergarten levels (ages 3-6) are expected to keep growing. That’s good news, it means more children are getting an education and will have more opportunities to lift themselves from poverty. The challenge, the current classroom can’t fit them all. Can you imagine three and four year olds sitting shoulder to shoulder for four+ hours each day? I could not even teach in the room because there were so many students and four different levels, it was too overwhelming for me. A new classroom will make a huge difference.

While I was at the school, the APEC leadership team and I, with the help of a Masaka volunteer construction engineer, laid out a design plan for an additional nursery classroom that will be slightly wider than the current nursery classroom. It will serve the 3 and 4 year olds. The existing classroom will then serve the 5 & 6 year olds. The newest classroom will be designed specifically with the needs of 3 & 4 year olds in mind including an area that has an area carpet as well as a section with tables for more activity based learning.

Some of you may be asking, why didn’t we just build the nursery classroom bigger last spring. It’s a good question. We had roughly 50 nursery students and when we were designing the new block of classrooms and, trying to be resource and cost conscious, we designed for the numbers they were serving. After the construction of the block of four classrooms, villagers clearly could see that the school really was taking shape and it was enough of a tipping point that more parents wanted to enroll their child or children. At the start of term 2, right after construction was completed, 35 new students showed up to enroll and most of them were nursery age. Then again at the start of term 3, another group of children showed up to be enrolled. We knew we would need additional classrooms at some point but none of us expected that it would be so soon.

The second big need is on-campus housing for at least two teachers. This is critical for several reasons:

-Teacher housing will greatly help in the retention and recruitment of staff. All APEC staff are volunteers. None receive a pay. Someday, they hope that will change but, unfortunately, it won’t be soon. Housing is hard to find in the village especially if you don’t have family in the area. APEC lost a skilled teacher 6 months ago because that teacher was offered a paid teacher job (I believe with housing) in Masaka. With the volunteer engineer’s help, and teacher input, we have a plan for a small house that will house two teachers, each with a private bedroom and a small shared living room type space.

-Having two teachers on campus will also lay groundwork to being able to eventually construct a dorm to house students currently living in unsafe situations or that are orphans without other housing options. Dorms are common Ugandan school campuses.

-Having two staff members living on campus will also provide needed oversight of school facilities during breaks and weekends. Currently, some supplies have to be stored off campus meaning they have to be brought every day if they are to be used. It will be so much better to be able to safely store supplies right on campus so that they are easily accessible when needed.

-The school is also anxious to have their own chickens and goats both to provide hands-on practical life skill learning for students but also to provide critical protein in students' diets particularly during times of food shortages and, with luck and planning, maybe this addition will even provide a small income stream for the school down the road. There are community members who have offered to donate both chickens and goats but the animals would not be secure at night without someone living on campus.

As with the first fundraising effort last spring for the four classrooms and the latrines, funds raised through this site or direct donation to me (for APEC) will be used to purchase the cement and sand, roofing timbers, metal roofing, and the doors and windows for the two buildings... the things the community is unable to afford. The school and community is working to provide everything they can which includes the bricks which are made locally and the labor including the engineering & construction oversight. The land the school sits on was also previously donated to the school by the Village Chairman.

Excluding bricks and labor, which the community expects to provide, the cost estimate for the new classroom is $2,850 in USD, the teacher housing estimate is $2,700 in USD. With my family's contribution and some funding that has already come in, my goal is to raise an additional $4,100 to complete both projects. I am hoping that you will help! I am happy to answer any questions you might have and to direct funds to any specific part of the two construction efforts that you most want to support. I also promise to send pictures and updates so that you can see the progress they are making and the impact specifically of your donation. As before, please know that any donation amount helps! Just to give you a sense of costs, a bag of cement is about $12, each roofing panel is $20 and a door is $100.

We hope to break ground for the classroom in early December right after the students start their two month break assuming they are able to secure the bricks and labor by then and enough funding is available for the things that need to be purchased. The Nov./early Dec. donations will be used for the classroom foundation and the walls, mid-December & January or later donations will be likely used for the roofing, the cement floor, doors & windows for the classroom and the construction of the teacher housing unit. We’d like to complete the classroom by mid-January so it is ready to welcome students the first week of February and we hope the teacher house will be done then as well but we expect that might take longer. APEC plans to hire a new teacher to start in February, having housing available or in progress will definitely assist in getting a strong candidate.

The school truly is a community effort, the engineer, the local hardware store, the furniture builder, the village Chairman, many parents, etc. all pitch in to find ways to help even though they also live on the edge financially and food security-wise, they do what they can to support the development and day-to-day operations of the school.

We hope you will join in to support us in this next phase of development.

Many thanks!

Julie

Photos: 1) The current overcrowded nursery; 2) The four-year olds in the nursery classroom; 3) a 5 or 6 year old reading; 4) another great Angels Park Education student

Background information on Angels Park Education Center from the original Go Fund Me page published in April, 2023:

During the summer of 2022, I was lucky enough to travel to Uganda. My husband, daughter and I were, by happenstance, invited to visit a small rural school, Angels Park Education Centre, in Kisaabwa Village in the Lwengo District about 18 km outside of the city of Masaka. As a retired high school Principal from Oregon who is still passionate about education, I immediately took them up on their offer. The school was started 6 years ago by civic-minded volunteer leaders in the community who wanted a better future for the poverty stricken children, including the many children who are orphans, in their Village.

The community, Kisaabwa Village, is very, very poor. Most families in the village are subsistence farmers surviving on one dollar or less per day, sometimes only having enough to eat one meal a day. Drought conditions in 2021 and most of 2022 drastically reduced crop harvests creating widespread food shortages. Most don’t have electricity and the water source for the 500 or so households is the nearby swamp (yes, the swamp is their main drinking water source). A few in the village are lucky enough to have a metal roof and a cistern tank to collect water when it rains, but the rest get water from the swamp. There are a few nearby schools but the fees are cost prohibitive by many of the families. As a result, most Kisaabwa Village children were not attending school, despite parents wanting their children to get an education. APEC launched 6 years ago with 30 students with a commitment to not charge fees for impoverished village children. When we visited the school, they were renting/borrowing small, dark, rooms in the village to serve as their classrooms. Their student population had grown from the initial 30 to 150 children and the space was nowhere near adequate. After meeting the school team and community leaders, and the children, I was hooked and volunteered to do what I could to help.

Last October, we, along with some friends and family members, started by purchasing 80 Ugandan or East African children's books (their first books) to help the children learn to read. We also purchased seeds to replenish their supply after two seasons of crop failures due to drought. Kisaabwa Village community leaders also stepped up and donated a plot of land to the school for a future school campus. In November and December 2022, we were able to provide financial support to build their first two small classrooms on the newly donated land. Through the first phase of school construction, we have developed effective ways to transfer money and established accountability systems (they send copies of all receipts and pictures of materials purchased as well as photo documentation of the work in progress). Our financial donations purchased cement, sand, and roofing materials. Although the Kisaabwa community members lack money to donate to help build their school, they contribute significantly in other ways including providing the bricks (they are made locally), what sand they can, and, most importantly, the land and the labor (community members with building experience volunteer and do the construction). There have even been donations of chickens and goats to help raise funds. Typically within days of receiving funds, the materials are purchased and the construction volunteers go right to work. And, in case you are wondering, the Ugandan government does not provide assistance to rural communities like Kisaabwa Village and although many NGOs are doing good work in Uganda, the number of villages and the needs are so great that it is that even if they could get on a list it would take at least 5-10 years to get help. In April, May & June 2023 we completed four more classrooms, (bringing the total number of classrooms to 6) and a small latrine building.

I am happy to provide more information or documentation to anyone who would like it. Unfortunately, you cannot “Google” Kisaabwa Village, Lwengo District, and come up with a map location or image (it is too small and lacks the economic or political importance to be on a Ugandan map even though it is only 12 km away from Kyabakuza Trading Center, a major trading hub near the city of Masaka). APEC does not have a website (they don’t have electricity, wifi or internet access). A simple solar power system and a cistern-type water collection system are future needs that we hope to tackle down the road)

If you are traveling to Uganda, I know a great school that would love to have you visit!

For more information and pictures you can go to my original Go Fund Me page link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-ugandas-kisabwa-village-build-their-school?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_cp_guide_do&member=25687935