Annex Part 2

It was so awesome being back at the Annex and working again with these wonderful teachers that clearly love to teach and are good friends. We also used the time to get some pen pal letters written and reconnect with some of the Annex students. Abby is working on collecting photo and video footage, and collecting interviews from many community and staff members. It was great to see all the hard work going into the gardening projects and the chicken coop at the Annex. The wall gardens are growing food, and there are many types of food growing throughout the large garden space on the school property. The chickens are thriving and about 150 eggs a day are being collected. Currently they are selling the eggs and are able to pay for chicken care and feed. When school starts again the plan is to provide eggs for the students breakfast and/or lunch and continue to sell enough to make to program financially self sufficient.

It was also so fun to do a live zoom call with all the classes at Eagle Crest Elementary School. The teachers showed them the gardens and all the work going in to them, the chicken coop, where the bore hole well will go, and also a tour of the classrooms, kitchen and other areas. The EC students asked so many awesome questions! It was a chaotic, fun and funny experience for all of us.

Lastly we worked together with the teachers to interview families for scholarships for the 2022 school year. Loved reconnecting with families from 2019 and meeting new ones. Always hard to say goodbye to this hard working group of teachers and community members.

Mwebaza Annex

We spent 3 days this week at Mwebaza Annex. Mwebaza Annex is partnered with Eagle Crest Elementary in Longmont. During this time we also had the a 2 day Permaculture/Sustainable Gardening training going on at the Annex and then at Mwebaza Infant. It turned out to be a great opportunity at both schools to connect with teachers, community members, parents, and kids.

Last June, BVSD donated 30 Chrome Books to the Mwebaza Foundation. This trip we brought 2 to each of the southern schools and 1 to PJS in Gulu (they don’t have a computer lab yet). Mbogo (computer teacher for Annex, Mwebaza and St. Paul) and I spent a lot of time with the Annex teachers getting them logged into to all 3 computers. One Chromebook was at each school already as part of the computers labs we set up Summer 2019.

We are working with the staff and teachers on learning how to use Google Spreadsheets to make some of their tasks easier and also for us to easily collect data to use when looking for funding opportunities for projects we are working on with our Uganda communities. We presented some ideas for different ways to keep track of attendance and grades on line, and discussed what would work for them and then revised our documents. We also worked with the head mistress and head teacher on another spreadsheet for them to keep track of important information about each student. Another project we have been working on during the COVID lockdown is for the teachers to become more comfortable using the computer labs and all the learning programs, games and information that are on the Raspberry Pis and on Internet In A Box. A non profit ”Kids on Computers” partnered with us to provide the computers and labs to the 3 Southern Uganda schools in 2019. We are fortunate to be able to continue our relationship with them!

Sunday

We left Gulu early Sunday morning for a VERY long drive to Kampala to spend the next week at Mwebaza Annex School and Mwebaza Infant School. Luckily for us, Jackson, our awesome friend and driver agreed to add a few hours on to our drive and take us through Murchison Falls National Park. So fun to squeeze all of us out the roof of our vehicle to see some cool animals, drive off road in search of a lioness and to get a close up and wild view of the Nile and Murchison Falls It was so worth the 14 hour drive! Thanks Jackson!!!!!

PJS – Our Last Day

Our last day at Parents’ Junior School was scholarship interview day. We each had a translator that asked the questions in Acholi and translated the answers to English for us. With close to 200 children applying for scholarships it was great to meet so many families from the community and exciting to see the interest in attending PJS when school reopens in 2022. At the end of the day we sadly said good bye to this awesome community!

PJS Day 2 – Celebration Day

Today we celebrated the graduation of 27 communities members that completed a two week permaculture training with Ali. It was a day of song, dance, speeches, socializing and eating. It was a beautiful day of seeing how this community supports and loves each other and welcomed us into their circle! Although most of the adults only speak Acholi, (a native language) friendships were made with smiles and laughter and we all greatly enjoyed this experience.

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Parents’ Junior School Day 1

We spent 3 very full days at PJS outside of Gulu in Northern Uganda. We were joined by Ali, a permaculture gardening expert who has been working with the community members on training them in sustainable gardening techniques using the principals of permaculture. Most of the community members are farmers. Our first day, after being welcomed to PJS by a group of parents and children, Ali and community members took us on a walking tour to many of the homes and gardens in the village. He showed us what he has been teaching them and how they are making many changes in their gardening practices to conserve water and regenerate soil. It was fascinating to see and hear about the progress they have made. I have learned so much!!!! We were also excited to finally see the completed school renovations in person and how much use the well was getting. It was a great day!

Northern Uganda

Wednesday we traveled about 8 hours to Gulu in Northern Uganda. Parents’ Junior School (PJS) is partnered with Coronado Hills Elementary School is in a village near Gulu. Although this is my 3rd trip to Uganda, it is my first visit to PJS. Thursday we had a short visit to the local market before heading to the school.

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Busy Days!

We have been here 4 days now. It’s been awesome and busy. Sunday we did errands in Kampala. Although not nearly as crowded as before Covid, the streets were still full of taxi vans, boda bodas, and people shopping and selling. We met with carpenters that are interested in making the muti-purpose furniture that Eagle Crest Elementary students designed in the Fall of 2019. The furniture will be used in the new teachers homes that will be built at St. Paul School.

There is a 7:00pm curfew in Uganda right now, we finished all our errands, enjoyed meeting up with Phil and discussing a solar micro-industry idea and then headed back to Kyengera before it was dark.

Early Monday morning we packed up and left for St. Paul Primary School. St. Paul is partnered with Coyote Ridge Elementary school in Broomfield. It was really great to see all our old friends from 2018 and 2019 and meet some new teachers as well. We spent two full days getting many things accomplished with the teachers and community members. We brought 2 donated Chrome-books for school staff to use at the school and worked together to develop some spreadsheets to make data collection easier and more efficient. We also introduced a Financial Literacy Curriculum to the P3 and P4 students. Time was spent each day taking videos and pictures and interviewing staff members. On Tuesday we interviewed family members that were applying for scholarships for their children. The new school year will start in January (we hope) and we had 107 students that received a partial scholarship.

It was so awesome to see so many students arrive with their families! They are all excited for school to open and to get back together to learn and spend time with their friends. We pulled some kids together and were happy to have them do some drawing and writing that we can share with their friends in Colorado. Below you will also see a couple of pictures of kids with posters that the Coyote Ridge Students sent with us to welcome the St. Paul students back to school.

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On Our Way!

Currently we are in Amsterdam waiting for our final flight to Uganda. So far so good…. masks/covid tests and all! We arrive tonight (October 2nd).

October Travel to Uganda

We are so excited to be finally traveling to Uganda October 1 – 18. Although we haven’t been on the ground in Uganda due to COVID-19 we have continued our work with our schools, our communities and our projects both in Colorado and Uganda. We look forward to some “in person” time at our four Uganda partner schools reconnecting with our teachers and community members to continue our work together.