Future plans for St. Zoe's

St Zoe's school campus at Kagoma is the location of our biggest projects and is about 4 hours to the west of Kampala. This year has been one of great change as we formed the Ugandan NGO called Kagoma Educational Development Organisation which is a legally constituted charity with Trustees who are professional friends of the work together with parents and villagers.
During 2010 a number of new initiatives in both UK and Germany have resulted in the Ugandan team to be able to start a really important set of new works.

Preparing a new garden near the primary school

Primary School refurbishment was started with very generous UK donation about 18 months ago and this let us make a start. But in the middle of the year the German parishes who also support this work have committed to raise the money to complete this work over the next 2 years. This will improve class rooms, roads and paths and school access and gardens.

Brick making machine which will help to create good paths and roads on site

Water supply at St Zoe's was developed a few years ago thanks to the Bishop family donations and fund raising. But as the school and site numbers grew and the changes in weather hit Uganda there was a real shortage of water last year. With a school pick up truck we were able to travel some distance and purchase water but this is a poor solution. We have just let a contract to enhance all the site water harvesting opportunities by fitting guttering and storage to all building and this should be complete by January 2011.

The secondary school with 72 pupils now has one 3000 square metre 4 room building. We have now raised enough money to start a second similar building and the work will start in December this year. This will allow us to cover 6 years classes.

The first secondary school building with the Director and teaching staff 

Sport is really important for children and thanks to Matt Houghton and his Engage for Africa project we have been able to fund the local farmers and parents to spent time creating proper sports fields for football, basketball, and athletics and these are being built now. Bit also we have been able to fund a very wide range of sport equipment.

"Girls don't ride bicycles" is the cultural norm".  Our local team said "why?"

So they have purchased 3 girls bicycles and the excitement and joy for the girls was amazing. "Now we can ride too."

Our two 12 month volunteers, Rebecca and Naomi taught the girls to ride.

The Kagoma Vocational Skills Institute is the  really big venture which will take a number of years but which could really help to transform the lives of the local people. The Institute which is on the 80 acre site will be run separately from the schools and will over time provide a wide range of skills needed by the children and adults to help them get or create real jobs. We start this building work in December also and the first skill areas will be tailoring, building and wood work, tropical agriculture, book keeping and domestic skills.

We plan to engage with the local communities to make sure that the skills chosen are those most needed for the future.

More about this project on later postings.

But is is nice to hear what Happy Kukunda has to say about this;

And maybe Happy could be a doctor one day. We are already sponsoring a medical student at University in Gulu and she is in her second year.