For now, the government-mandated closure of schools continues. According to the latest announcement by the Ugandan President on 21 July, schools will remain closed until September 2020, when a decision will be made as to whether learning campuses may reopen for the remainder of the year. To date, the nation has recorded 1,195 cases of COVID-19 and five deaths.
With most of this school year already a write-off, it is more important now more than ever that we deliver the continuity of education and health and welfare programs that will facilitate the students’ smooth transition back to school. We have adopted a longer-term outlook and preparing for the possibility that schools may not re-open until 2021.
Pre-primary student, Ciara Namuleme, working through her home learning book at home.
With your support we continue to:
Fund our teachers’ salaries so they can continue to create, deliver and collect for marking weekly home learning packs via motorbike.
Provide weekly one-on-one phone calls between teachers and their students to offer additional support as well as to check in on their general well-being.
Install water tanks complete with liquid soap, fresh water and instructions on correct hand-washing techniques, in our Katuuso and Mbazzi communities to ensure community access to clean, safe water. To date, 19 new water tanks have been installed in local villages.
Procure and distribute packs of basic food and hygiene supplies, including liquid soap, toilet rolls, rice, corn and freshly harvested yams, to each and every School for Life family so that they have the nutrition and hygiene they need to stay healthy.
Operate our health clinics at Mbazzi and Katuuso which we have opened up to the whole community to access.
Provide an in-home counselling program to provide psycho-social support to our students from the comfort of their home as they face additional hardships due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Fund the work of our KUMI tailors, which has enabled them to create and distribute over 10,000 reusable cloth face masks to the entire community, as well as to our health partner Alive Medical Services, to keep the wider community protected when they do need to venture outdoors.
Improve our school campuses ready for the eventual return to face-to-face learning, including repainting all classrooms, school furniture and signage. During this period, our teachers have been hard at work repainting classrooms, school furniture and signage, as well as planting crops of fruit trees, sugar cane and yams to ensure a consistent supply of fresh produce for the students and their families.
Experience from other crises shows that girls, who already face additional barriers in accessing an education, face a higher risk of falling through the cracks altogether and never returning to school.
With this in mind we have ramped up our community engagement to maintain a positive dialogue on the benefit of educating girls. Specifically, our school counselor and teachers are maintaining close relations with families and providing additional support to protect against teenage pregnancy, physical and sexual abuse, as well as providing emergency food support to alleviate the domestic responsibilities of the young women in our communities so that they can continue to learn and thrive.
Thank you again for your incredible support.
