ROTA R I ANS B ACK OR PHANS NEW DORMI TORY FOR UGANDAN CHI LDREN
Rotarians in Kinver and Bewdley have helped transform the lives of Ugandan orphans with a £14k fundraising campaign to build a new dormitory.
Forty-eight children have moved into the environmentally-friendly dormitory in Kititi following a five-month building project run by the Planting for Hope Uganda charity led by Kate Oakley from Caunsall.
The building, attached to a school, provides safe accommodation for students who live with an impoverished grandparent or guardian and are forced to walk six miles a day through inhospitable bush.
The project will ensure the girls’ safety as well as enable them to have a full-time education, improve their health by providing safe water and two meals a day. The 2-3 hours of their time spent walking to and from school is now more profitably used doing homework, catching up with missed education and taking part in sports and spent with friends. A house mother is also on hand to provide for the girls’ pastoral care needs.
The students’ proximity to the adjoining Cornerstone School also enables them to benefit from evening tuition from live-in teachers.
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PfHU Founder Kate Oakley said: “The girls are loving living in the dormitory. They feel really safe because they don't have the daily trek to and from school through bush and scrubland, along rough tracks. In the rainy season this journey is impossible so they miss several weeks of schooling which they hate.
“It's the first time any of them have slept in a proper bed with a mattress, pillow, sheets and blanket and not had to share a sleeping space on the floor with siblings.
“They have more time to relax with friends. Chores are fewer and shared and clean water is at hand and it is safe to drink straight from the water tank. They also have electricity so they can see to do homework.”
Retired teacher Kate helped establish the PfHU with a young Ugandan graduate Apollo Saku in 2012 while volunteering and fundraising for another bush village in Uganda following the death of her husband. Since then continued sponsorship has funded the building, equipping and staffing of Cornerstone School – the only school in the region that offers free places to children from destitute families.
Fundraising is still ongoing to provide further shower facilities at the dormitory as well as more furniture to help with homework and school improvements such as library. Funds have also been used to buy land for commercial crops and build a mission house to accommodate volunteers as well as teach women new skills to enable them to earn money and become more self-sufficient.
Kate, who in 2021 was awarded the Rotary Community Champion Award, said: “I was very impressed with Apollo’s vision and passion for helping poor families living in the area. There were so many families going hungry and children uneducated because parents were destitute, that we decided we would work together to see what we
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could do to help them change this situation. We chose the village of Kititi because families were mainly headed by women, many widowed because of Aids.
“The women formed a cooperative, we bought land and Apollo taught them sustainable farming so that they could grow and share food to feed their families.”
The twice-yearly rainy season followed by drought, hunger, unclean water, difficult terrain and lack of shoes, are all causes for poor health and attendance and educational underperformance in rural bush villages in South West Uganda.
An uneducated girl child is statistically more likely to become pregnant in teenage years, which leads to increasing poverty for themselves and their families.
Ian Maddock, Chair of Kinver Rotary Club International Committee, said: “As a former headteacher I believe that we owe it to children, wherever in the world they may be, to educate them. It is a path out of poverty, can enhance their self-respect and enables them both to be self- sufficient and to contribute to their society.
“This project will provide this opportunity for countless children over the coming years.”
Kate added: “Kinver and Bewdley Rotary Clubs, together with District, have supported PfHU from the beginning.
“I cannot thank Heart of England Rotary enough for the support they have given us. We would certainly not have this new dormitory without their help.”
“We could not have achieved so much in the time without the tremendous support of Heart of England Rotary. We have achieved far more than we thought possible, in a relatively short time, because of that support.”
Donations to the Rotary’s PfHU fundraising can be made at
http://goto.gg/51324
Further information about Planting for Hope Uganda is available at
www.planting4hopeuganda.co.uk
CHARIT Y ROTARIANS
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