G-752

Classrooms for St. Vianney J.S

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Project Description

Region: Africa

Country: Uganda

Location: Gayaza

Total Budget: $82,864

Area of Focus: Basic education and literacy



ST VIANNEY JUNIOR SCHOOL PARENTS ASSOCIATION

P.O.BOX 11758, KAMPALA, UGANDA

E-mail: stvianneyjspa@yahoo.com Tel: +256 711197622

PROJECT PROPOSAL TO CONSTRUCT 5 CLASSROOMS AND VIP LATRINE

The Project Description

The project to be undertaken is to construct 5 classrooms, one library room, one computer room and a VIP latrine with 8 stances.

St Vianney Junior School is located in Kabubbu parish, in Wakiso district in Uganda. The school was started in 2011 by concerned members of Kabubbu parish who teamed with parents to put up a school which could provide primary education to the poor children at affordable contributions. The community wanted also to cater for the education of the increasing number of orphaned children whose parents died of HIV/AIDS. The school was started in five small rooms which were built by GORTA Ireland as a community resource centre where farmers could get seminars to be trained in modern farming practices.

Although there was need to have a community school to provide education to the needy children in this poor community, the structures which were available were inadequate. The school needs 11 classrooms to be built in permanent construction materials which are environmentally suitable for the pupils' occupation and learning.

The school also needs a library where text books which were donated by the Rotary Clubs of Kampala/Ssese Islands supported by the Rotary Club of Carse of the Stirling, UK can be kept and pupils read and use them appropriately. The school also lacks proper sanitation and separate latrines for the female and male children. At the moment there is one latrine with two stances serving a population of over 320 male and female children together with their male and female teachers. Since its inception in 2011, the school has offered tremendous support by providing free education to over 300 children. These children would not have scored any chance of gaining education if it were not to be the community efforts to put up St Vianney Junior School.

Although the community members were in dire need to establish a primary school to educate the big number of children in the community who were not going to school, but they did not have the capacity to develop the school up to the required minimum standards of the Uganda Ministry of Education. If this school is not supported to construct adequate classrooms, and latrines, it is likely to lose its reputation and more so it can even face closure for lack of adequate classrooms and proper sanitation.

The school management cannot afford the cost of putting up the required infrastructures because it is serving a poor rural community where parents and guardians are not financially able to pay school fees to sustain the school requirements and development. Because of its poor financial resources, the school was assisted by the Rotary Clubs to acquire text books, and classroom furniture donated by ETM, Belgium. If this school if financially supported, it can be a very resourceful institution in addressing child illiteracy, child labor and reduce the number of orphans and vulnerable children who would end up on streets and drug abusers.

In Kabubbu parish area, there are many needy children who need help for their education which they miss due to lack of scholastic materials. Although government offers free education through government aided schools, there are areas where parents and guardians have lost this opportunity because they are too poor to provide their children with school requirements such as uniforms, exercise books, pens, pencils, money for lunch meals, and others of the like. In such situations, the hazy statistical number of children who attain free education in poor rural communities is below average which conceals grave inequalities. The people in Kabubbu parish entirely depended on agriculture for food and subsistence, but they are no longer gaining good yields because land has become so barren with no affordable means to fertilize it which has made survival of the poor farmers to be at a stake. When survival is at stake, education for their children also becomes unaffordable. HIV/AIDS scourge has also claimed lives of many people living behind many orphans in the hands of aged grandparents who cannot afford to support their education and welfare.

St Vianney Junior School was therefore established as a community programme to transition the poor and orphan children into mainstream education, by providing basic education and where appropriate, vocational training. The program also aims at creating spaces for learning for children who do not live with their parents or guardians. The children we work to support have no alternatives for education, or childhood. St Vianney Junior School instituted a Parents Association which creates an important role for these children within our communities, to be children, and to feel supported for their education, until they complete primary education.

St Vianney Junior School Parents Association's programme is a holistic one, addressing factors creating, or sustaining the circumstances these children find themselves in. In particular we work with parents/guardians in the communities so that they understand the importance of and encourage their children in education. We also work to support parents to develop income- generating activities by training and imparting skills that can empower them to improve agricultural productivity.

Through the efforts of the parents association, school has assisted many children who were not going to school because they were lacking school fees and scholastic requirements. The school has tried to seek for sponsors to provide for the children's needs but the sponsorship program is not yet fully supported. Currently, the school is going through a very difficult financial situation to cater for the increasing number of orphan children who do not make any financial contribution to the school. In the same situation, children with parents are also too poor to pay the school fees. The school does not get any funding from the government which makes it to be under-resourced and operates under severe financial hardships.

Because of the slim chances for the children to continue their education after completing primary education in St Vianney School, the members of the community proposed to train their children in functional skills to equip them with knowledge they can use to create their own jobs. This programme also needs support to acquire the training tools and equipments.

Project Goal:

The Goal of the project is building infrastructures for St Vianney Junior School to provide a permanent solution for the education of poor and orphaned children in the age group of 4 to 15 years in poor rural communities of Kabubbu parish.

This shall be achieved through a school support programme run with the community and keep on providing remedial support and empowering to the children till they complete their primary education.

The vital and urgent need for 5 classrooms and a library, computer room and VIP Latrine

The school started with in a community centre with only five small and simple classrooms instead of 12 classrooms which are needed for a full primary school to accommodate pupils from Nursery section to Primary Seven class. The Nursery section needs three classrooms; baby, middle and top classes. The primary section needs seven classrooms with a library and one room for the computer training. Pupils in five classes study under the shade of a tree during dry seasons. When it rains, they are squeezed in the kitchen room and miss their lessons. There is therefore a vital and urgent need to construct 5 classrooms to save this situation. At the end of 2013 the Rotary Club of Kampala/Ssese and Rotary Club of Carse of the Stirling UK, donated text books worthy UK£3,000 to the school. We need to construct one library room to keep those books safe and accessible to pupils to read them from the library room. This year we are hopeful to get computers from the ETM, Belgium, we therefore need one computer room to be constructed for the computer training classes. All these rooms must be constructed in permanent building materials. Each classroom measures 35ft x 40ft to accommodate 40-50 pupils in an environment which is conducive for learning. This shall also open chances for more children to be enrolled in the school. The school has no adequate latrine facilities for pupils and teachers. The small latrine has only three stances which are used by female and male pupils with their teachers. We need to construct the VIP latrines urgently to improve on the school sanitization, otherwise the administration authorities will not allow this situation to continue. Although they value the assistance we provide to the needy pupils in this community, but they don't want the pupils to study under such poor conditions.

In Kabubbu parish there are so many deprived children, and traditionally this has caused the high levels of illiteracy in our community. The increasing number of orphaned and vulnerable children living in our villages needs community collective efforts to be addressed and one of the programmes started is the establishment of a community school to help educate the children who are deprived of the most basic services and denied the right to thrive through education.

Background of Kabubbu Parish community

Kabubbu parish is found in a poor rural community in Nangabo sub-county in Wakiso district in Uganda. The people in this community are peasant farmers using the hand-hoe to grow food for family use and in rare cases get a small surplus for sale. They cultivate small areas of land measuring 1 to 2 acres per family of about 5 persons which makes it difficult to grow a variety of crops. Due to the pressure on land use, the soil has become very barren and needs applying fertilizers, but most cultivators cannot afford to buy them.

Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world. In most parts of the country, harsh environmental conditions exacerbate the conditions of poverty. Dry and barren land covers large expanses of our community. As the poor try to eke out livings through cultivation and subsistence practices, they exhaust the land using up the soil nutrients needed to grow crops. Over time, this has led to soil degradation, a process in which once fertile land turns to barren resulting in very low agricultural yields.

HIV/AIDS and the low levels of literacy in the communities also contribute much to the poverty cycle. As a result of such factors, the number of people living in extreme poverty in Kabubbu parish increases tremendously which has affected the education of many children.

St Vianney Junior School has therefore, been started to open opportunities for children in desperate financial situations to get education with the assistance of the parents association to eradicate illiteracy in the communities surrounding the school. The parents and guardians who bring children to study in this school are very poor people with very low incomes. Very few of them can afford to make school fees contributions for their children. This makes the school to be unable to raise enough revenue to construct the vitally needed classrooms to accommodate a good number the pupils in ten classrooms from nursery to primary seven.

The need for putting up a community school in Kabubbu Parish community

Orphaned and vulnerable Children is still a large issue in Kabubbu parish. Many children do not go to school for lack of financial support which forces them to work in the stone quarries, and collecting scraps and used polythene bags to sell for a day's survival. These children are either living alone or work to support their aged grandparents. They have no options for an education or a childhood. There is a need to encourage the communities to support these children to be a part of our program where they can study, learn and interact with other children.

We put up the junior school in our community to initiate a programme to reduce illiteracy and unemployment for the children in this poor community. When children are educated, deviant behaviors such as prostitution, street loitering, drug use, robbery and many others decline in the community. As a generation of educated children becomes adults, they will improve the quality of life for everyone in their community. Educated children will make more money than their parents and will be better prepared to pull their families out of poverty and hence develop the communities. The overall livelihood of community members will also improve. With new found education and prosperity, diseases such as HIV/AIDS will begin to lose their grip and infant mortality rates will be reduced. Parents will also learn within the walls of a newly established school to acquire modern agricultural and farming skills which can have a ripple of effect that improves life for their own children, their grand children and children of future generations. This will eradicate the abject poverty cycle, hunger, diseases and other human sufferings that have affected the development of our community for so long while traditional occupations such as agriculture and farming shall be modernized to yield higher harvests.

Benefit of the project and school program

Every child has a right to education, health care, and good feeding of nutritional foods. However, there are so many children in Kabubbu parish who do not enjoy those rights for being orphans and vulnerable. It is through St Vianney Junior School that we strive to make every child in the community of Kabubbu to be given the opportunity to attain primary education. This shall enable the children to develop mentally, emotionally, spiritually, economically, socially and physically.

In our school programme, the cost of school fees is waived and books provided, but the parents or guardians are required to provide uniforms. We try to link children to a local church-based program where Christian adults offer love, guidance, personal attention, guided recreation and some school requirements.

Children also learn a vocation that can later provide them employment.

School children shall participate in sports and exercise where they can develop their gross and fine football and netball skills.

How will this project solve this problem?

The project shall help by providing 5 classrooms to increase the number of pupils' enrollment to attain primary education within the community. The school library and computer rooms shall be availed to the school. The school shall improve the sanitary conditions by constructing a VIP latrine with separate stances for female and male children. When these infrastructures are put in place, the school shall have fulfilled the minimum required standards and shall not face closure by the authorities. The project will help to address factors creating vulnerable children in Kabubbu parish community by supporting children of poor families, orphans and vulnerable children. The project shall solve inadequate access of education to poor and orphaned and vulnerable children.

Beneficiaries:

The direct beneficiaries of this project will be 500-700 children including poor children, orphans and vulnerable (aged 4-15) for mainstreaming primary education program per year. They are basically vulnerable group of orphaned and deprived children who lost one or both parents, and those from poor and vulnerable families.

The school administration

St Vianney Junior School was established by a resolution of the community members. The members formed a parents association which constitutes parents, guardians and well-wishers who subscribe as registered members to constitute a general assembly which is the supreme decision making body and policy maker which elects the members of the board of directors and a school management committee which undertakes the day-to-day running of the school. St Vianney Junior School Parents Association is a registered organization by Wakiso District Administration as a service provider non-profit making organization. The association operates a bank account where all the school funds are deposited for safe custody.

Involvement of the Rotary Club in the project

The Rotary Club of Kampala/Ssese Islands will be involved in the purchasing of building materials, supervising the construction work and ensuring the proper implementation of all activities relating to the construction of classrooms and VIP latrine. It has been the policy of the Rotary Club of Kampala/Ssese Islands to get involved in the St Vianney's projects whenever the school receives a grant. We received a grant of UK£3,000- from the Rotary Club of Carse of the Stirling to buy text books for the school. The Rotary Club of Kampala/Ssese Islands formed a committee which undertook the procurement and labeling of the text books, and submitted a report on the project. The Rotary Club will follow the same policy when this project is funded.

The Long Term Impact of the project

The project shall provide infrastructures which shall make our school to be a potential institution in changing the course of the lives of poor and orphan children with no alternative for education. By teaching literacy and providing them a chance of formal education, they shall have a chance of a future and to escape a vicious circle of poverty.

Project Budget:

The Total Project Budget for the construction project is US$ 82,864.25 which includes five classrooms, one library, one computer training room, and a VIP latrine of 8 stances to be constructed.

1. Construction of 5 classrooms US$ 52,144.00

2. Construction of 2 rooms for library and computer training US$ 19,070.25

3. Construction of a VIP Latrine US$ 11,650.00

TOTAL PROJECT BUDGET US$ 82,864.25

Primary Host Partner

District: 9211

Rotary Club of: Kampala-Ssese Islands

Primary Contact: Nelson Kabwama

Email: stvianneyjspa@yahoo.com

Primary International Partner

We are looking for a Club partner. Click here to pledge support for this project. Recording a pledge will make you the Primary International Partner for this project.

Project Status

Dropped
This project has been "Dropped". Check the history log entries to see why it was dropped.

Project listed for the 2020-21 Rotary Year.

Proposed Financing

Existing Contributions Towards This Project

Date

Cash

DDF

Total

There are no contributions yet for this project.

Remaining Amount to Raise

Additional Club Contribution (Needed) - Add a contribution

$82,864

-

$82,864

Amount Requested from The Rotary Foundation

-

$0

$0

Total

$82,864

Note: as of July 1, 2015 there is a 5% additional support fee for cash contributions. This fee does not appear in the financials above because it does not apply if the funds are sent directly to the project account (without going through TRF, and therefore without Paul Harris credit). Clubs sending their cash contribution to TRF must be aware they will have to send an additional 5%.

Project Supporting Documents


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History Log Entries

23-May-14

System Entry

Creation of project page.

2-Sep-21

System Entry

System Entry: Project dropped per lack of response to the carry-over notification emails.

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