S4S Update: New Building for Atanga’s Teachers
The changing face of Atanga features the foundations of a new administrative building (foreground) and two IC-built classroom blocks (background).
Atanga is a relatively small school, and until two years ago it consisted of no more than one dilapidated shack surrounded by a few trees. Students now attend class in new classrooms and study in well-equipped laboratories. The IC impact at Atanga has been huge: S4S has invested over $370,000 in new classrooms, latrines, a power system, and teacher capacity development workshops. With that said, the students at Atanga still have basic educational needs that have not yet been met; even after all that IC has done at the school, more projects await.
The top of this year’s School Project Priority List for Atanga was a request for a new Administration Block. In our struggle to raise Atanga’s performance to a nationally competitive level, catering for the teachers and administration is equally as important as supporting the students . Only good teaching spawns effective learning. The new administrative building will be two stories high, with new offices for the Head Teacher and his support staff, as well as a huge staff room for all the teachers. The foundations are done, and soon construction on the walls will begin. Before we know it, Atanga will be yet another step closer to achieving the nurturing educational climate it is striving to create. This transformation is taking place because thousands of students around the world are banding together for Atanga!
On the Ground: VSLA Group Profile
Members of Oberabic’s VSLA group wait for their weekly meeting to start
The village, Oberabic, meaning Five Mosquitos in Luo, is not unlike the hundreds of other small villages carpeting the countryside of northern Ugandan. Subsistence farmers separated from one another by vast swaths of farmland are its residents. Its roads are mottled paths tunneled by head high grasses. Its nights—electricity and light bulb-free—are cloaked in deep, penetrating shadows when clouds float thick. There’s no bustling town center. No large restaurants or modern internet cafes. Because they pull their livelihoods from the earth beneath their feet, season by season, many people in Oberabic exist on the fringes of a money-based economy, relying on bartering and infrequent money-based purchases to survive. Which is why, on this day, the meeting taking place is more remarkable: farmers who have never done so before are pooling their cash, balancing financial ledgers, and taking loans.
S4S Update: 2nd Girls Dorm at Gulu High
The walls of Gulu High School's second IC-built girls dormitory are getting higher and higher with each passing day
Last month S4S signed the contract for the second phase of construction of a new girls dormitory at Gulu High School. The winning contractor is now on site and making rapid progress; walls are rising from the recently finished foundations. This project will utilize most of the funds raised for Gulu High from last year’s S4S tour.
The new dormitory will stand side by side with the existing girls dormitory completed under Round 2, with a third dormitory planned for 2010! When complete, the three new buildings will provide safe and modern living facilities for 576 female students. These dormitories have become S4S signature projects in the region, raising the bar for secondary school development in the North.
For those of you fundraising on the behalf of Gulu High, keep up the efforts—the girls are eager to move in!
Faces of IC Update: Sunday
Above: Sunday during a recent visit to IC’s offices in Gulu, Uganda
Sunday
St. Michael’s High School
17 years old
When he sat down across from me, I faced a shy boy with darting eyes. Within moments, though, Sunday came alive in a flurry of smiles and hand gestures. We spent 30 minutes talking about school, about the future, about life. At the start of our interview, I asked Sunday how things had been going, and, waxing poetic like someone twice his age, he replied without hesitation. “You know, in life everything has two sides, like a coin. The good also has the bad. For me, it is the same–two sides. But for now, most things are good.”