Our school now has 234 children attending. Out of these approx. 175 are sponsored, but we still need more people to come forward and send us just £3.50 a month per child. Two more classrooms have been built for P1 and P2 and another two have been commenced. A new head teacher is due to be employed alongside the 7 paid teachers and matron. Each class is now equipped with a box containing creative and fun tools for teaching, all the walls are plastered and painted and most classrooms except the youngest babies have desks.
The Lodge
Expansion and improvement continues with a new reception, toilets and kitchen being built. Volunteers are getting involved with the repainting of Banda’s shower cubicles and staff all work very hard to ensure volunteers have a comfortable and informative stay.
Kampala Facility
Over the past year Denis has been working on building an office in the city plus a small apartment where our visitors can stay overnight or freshen up with a shower and rest after their long flight or bus journey. Within a few weeks we plan to employ a full-time PA to co-ordinate volunteers and take over some of the other admin work, making use of a faster and more reliable internet connection.
Community Projects
The school continues to grow and a Primary 3 class will be opened in Jan 2012. A strong Parent Teachers Association (PTA) has been formed and from now on will oversee the daily admin and running of the school.
In 2010 we raised enough money to enable us to purchase and distribute 250 mosquito nets to many of our village families through www.againstmalaria.com/distribution_toplevel.aspx?ProposalID=169
We are trying to encourage/create more opportunities for the whole community to benefit from our visitors. These include hosting a market and souvenir store so villagers can make and sell crafts etc to visiting volunteers. Another opportunity is to have local families host an authentic Ugandan evening meal at their home which will be paid for by the attending guests. Finally more different singing groups within the community will be invited to perform to the volunteers if they wish; again this gives them a small additional income.
The water project continues to develop as per plans; the source is secured, the upper storage tanks are almost built and pipework is on its way down to Migorora Village. £3,000 more is needed to complete this first phase. To pipe it across and give taps in the two next closest villages will need a further £7,000.
A decision on the next big community project development has been made. We are going to commence bidding to raise funds for a community centre to be built in the school grounds. It will function as a health and resource centre and also serve the school requirements. A village health provision including an outreach centre will be provided from here. This is very early days, taking months of planning, costing and bidding before any changes will be seen on the ground.
Notifications
The members of our registered CBO (Ruhanga Community Development Network) have been meeting regularly and are very supportive of all our activities, especially the funding of the water project. Recently we been informed by them that they plan to replace their secretary due to a conflict of interests between his personal and the community projects.
Thanks
All the donations received and work that has been done to help the villagers in Ruhanga would never have been achieved, were it not for every one of our volunteers and donors, and heartfelt thanks go out to you all.
