Wondering what Mend has been up to?

Check this video to find out.

Mend // Tease from Ashley Gutierrez on Vimeo.

We’re making progress!

Trenches, dirt, rebar, and men in green construction hats were scattered throughout the building  site of Gulu Senior Secondary’s future library/multipurpose hall last week.  On a daily basis, there are about twenty-five construction workers at the site of Invisible Children’s biggest Schools for Schools (S4S) building project to date.

Fredrick, the contractor heading up the project, commented,  “The foundation trenches are done, and they are starting to prepare for the concrete columns.”  On the day we visited, the concrete was being tested to make sure it would be at its maximum strength for the building.  Once this is verified, the columns will be constructed.

Here at IC Uganda, we want to give a special thanks to partner schools that support Gulu Senior Secondary.  The students and staff are eagerly waiting for the day they can use their new library and multipurpose hall.  Stay tuned for more updates!

–Nikki

How is the Teacher Exchange faring?

For the past five weeks, American teachers have been team teaching in our partner schools here in Gulu. Under the Teacher Exchange (TeX) program, secondary school teachers from abroad teach and interact with Ugandan teachers for six weeks each summer. Other than learning new skills and improving teaching methods, the program helps promote a culture of tolerance and mutual understanding among teachers and students.

We stopped by Layibi Secondary School and met Jessica, one of the teachers participating in this year’s summer TeX program. She heard about the program five years ago and since then, has been preparing herself to participate. Her motivation comes from the urge to do things that challenge her, change her life, and influence other people.

We spoke to Jessica and her partner teacher, Francis, who are teachers of Mathematics and KOBS (Knowledge of Behaviour and Self), Invisible Children’s emotional literacy curriculum. They are excited about all they’ve learned this summer.

“I have learned how to teach many students at a time. Every day I teach approximately 80 students, so it is a lot different than teaching in the U.S., with only maybe 30 students,” Jessica said.

Beyond classroom size, Jessica has learned to use new teaching skills. Her efforts have not only benefited her own teaching, but also her partner teacher and the students.

“The Teacher Exchange is very beneficial. I have been learning to teach students that are not used to my teaching methods and trying to figure out how to change my methods to allow them understand what I want them to do. For the learners, it is a good thing to have more than one experience in their schooling. It helps to learn new ways of thinking and have different ideas presented to them in different ways,” Jessica added.

Jessica’s partner teacher is equally excited at the opportunity to learn new teaching methods. He believes it will make the teaching process diverse.

“I have learned a number of skills…I now will make more use of participatory learning to ensure maximum classroom activity. We have also been interacting on how we can solve mathematical problems using methods other than calculators. It is very good,” said Francis.

The TeX is a program Invisible Children is implementing to raise the bar of education in northern Uganda. Our hope is that this program will bring northern Ugandan classrooms to a more competitive standard.

-Bernadette

On the ground: Keyo Secondary School + cotton

One of our Legacy Scholarship Program scholarship students at Keyo Secondary School

Program overlap is something that gets our hearts racing at IC Uganda.  When one school or one beneficiary benefits from two or three separate IC programs, life impact is amplified.  Keyo Secondary School, one of our 11 Schools for Schools partner schools in Uganda, has just teamed up with Conservation Cotton Initiative Uganda (CCIU) to launch an on-campus cotton growing project.  Last week, with support from CCIU, Keyo’s agricultural students and teachers finished planting two acres of cotton out in front of their school.  Once harvested and sold to CCIU in December, the cotton will earn Keyo extra funds that it will use to help cover its operational expenses.  In short, the school has just planted a few acres of financial stability.  Coupled with IC’s existing presence at the school with our Legacy Scholarship Program and Schools for Schools, the new cotton project means that certain students at Keyo are now benefitting from three separate IC programs.

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From Uganda to America, Step One

Lillian, Innocent, Ronald, and Pepito pose for a picture before dinner on their last night in Uganda

40,000 years of American history explained in 30 minutes.  Impossible?  Yes.  We gave it our all, but when everything was said and done, it took us almost an hour.  :)

When you have myriad topics to explain to 16 Ugandans about to head to the US for three months, and when the majority of those Ugandans have never left Africa before, let alone flown on a plane, something that at its conception seemed like an easy few days of cultural training turns into a herculean exercise in patience and endurance.  How do you prepare someone to navigate the murky cultural waters of the Land of the Free?  Thanks to our diversity, there are so many implied whispers, so many subtle subtexts, underpinning the tangle of American behavior and philosophy.  One thing no one ever boasts about when they rave about The Melting Pot is the type of gunk that has accumulated around the rim of the thing, the residue of centuries of cultural fusion.  Where do you even begin to describe the most diverse country on Earth?

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S4S Update: The Books Have Arrived!

One of the many boxes of books recently delivered to Invisible Children’s Gulu office

It ain’t easy moving nine tons of anything, but books in particular are hard work.  A team of six men just unloaded dozens and dozens of boxes of books—24,000 in all—at Invisible Children’s Gulu office.  Sweat flowed down their faces under the midday sun like water from a tap.  They persevered though, and now we have our hands on something we’ve been working to procure for months:  enough books to stock the libraries of our 11 partner schools.

In January and February, once the new Ugandan school year starts, S4S will work to distribute all of the titles to our school libraries.  The books—some of the 1.6 million collected during the Round 3 book drive—cover a wide range of subjects and genres; some are textbooks and others are novels.  As we prepare to launch our reading club curriculum, READ, at our schools, the books couldn’t have come at a more perfect time.  They’ll supplement the novels students read in their clubs.  The READ clubs and this recent shipment of books are the latest steps IC has taken to improve reading culture at its partner schools.  In Uganda, like many other countries in East Africa, students have next-to-no access to reading materials while at school.  Making books available is the first part of the reading culture equation.  Invisible Children has teamed up with Books for Africa (booksforafrica.org) to bring this book delivery to fruition.

The librarians have been trained.  The books are here.  Bring on the new school year!

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.

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S4S Update: 2nd Girls Dorm at Gulu High

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.”

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