Our world is currently facing hardship and suffering on a scale we have never seen before.
We wanted to share with you an update on how our communities in Uganda are faring during this difficult time. The hardships they already struggle with are only magnified by COVID-19.
As of 2nd June 2020, there have been 457 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and fortunately, as yet, no recorded deaths from the virus. Uganda remains in a state of strict lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus in the nation.
On March 20th, our School for Life campuses closed their doors as per the Ugandan Government’s lockdown orders. Our campuses remain closed in accordance with ongoing COVID-19 restrictions but we have been working harder than ever to ensure our students, and their families, are healthy, safe, well-fed and able to continue learning at home.
Our local team has rallied together to obtain essential food and hygiene supplies to distribute to our students and their families, so that no-one is hungry or unsafe during this crisis. Most recently, they distributed food packs containing 5kg of posho (a type of maize flour porridge widely eaten in Uganda), 3kg of beans, 2kg of rice and 1 litre of cooking oil, as well as hygiene packs consisting of 5 litres of liquid soap and bars of soap and toilet rolls, to every family in our School for Life communities to ensure they are safe and well-fed for the next few weeks.
Our hard working teaching team has also gone out of its way to organise community education workshops at our schools to teach our communities how to best protect themselves from COVID-19, including lessons on correct hand-washing techniques and social distancing practices.
Having access to clean, safe water is another urgent need of our communities during this crisis, and so far, we have responded to this by distributing 19 water tanks, complete with liquid soap, fresh water and instructions on correct hand-washing techniques, throughout the Katuuso community to ensure every single member of the village has access to the clean water and hygiene materials they need to keep safe and healthy. With your support we hope to extend this program to the Mbazzi community, to fulfil those students and their families’ same, basic right to clean water.
The Katuuso students were thrilled with the new water tanks placed throughout the community.
The lives of our School for Life students and their families have been further complicated by COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the Ugandan Government which require anyone leaving their home to wear a face mask – medical supplies which they did not have ready access to. Luckily, however, the fantastic KUMI tailors have worked tirelessly to create a supply of beautiful and practical masks that they have delivered to our School for Life communities to help keep them safe and able to undertake essential activities outside their homes.
Thanks to our brilliant KUMI tailors, every family in our School for Life communities has been provided with a mask to wear when they need to venture outside of their homes.
Amidst all of these extra responsibilities, our incredible staff have managed to remain dedicated to providing our School for Life students with the best education possible, despite the enormous challenges our students face learning at home without electricity or access to the Internet.
Our dedicated teachers have been creating home learning packs for students, travelling to every surrounding village by motorbike to deliver them to our students as well as collect the work from previous home learning packs for feedback and marking. To help with this, each of our students' villages has appointed a 'village centre child' - a representative who is in charge of receiving and distributing the materials dropped off by the teachers to all the students in their village, and then returning the completed work back to the teacher.
Thanks to the hard work and commitment of our teachers, our students have been able to continue learning. It hasn’t been easy, but the resilience and dedication of our students to their studies has shone through, and many of our students have produced some wonderful work despite all the hardships they face.
Lyn, our resident counsellor at School for Life, has also been an incredible support to students and their families during this time. Lyn has started offering home-based counselling to offer our students and their families moral support, comfort and solutions to the difficulties they face at home during these challenging and uncertain times. Going from home to home to provide help, her compassion and care for our students is an inspiration to us all.
School for Life’s resident counsellor, Lyn, has been working hard to support our communities during the crisis.
As our students work diligently in their homes, we continue to seek out further ways in which we can ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of all our School for Life students and their families while remaining determined in our mission to educate poverty out of existence.
In the meantime, from the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank our brilliant School for Life staff for putting the wellbeing of our students and their families first always. You have kept our communities safe, healthy, nourished and learning during extreme hardship – that’s no easy feat.
Our staff have done so much – yet there is still so much more we need to do to ensure the bright future we have promised our School for Life students does not get stolen away by COVID-19.
Click here to find out about our emergency appeal to assist our communities suffering in this crisis.
