Problem and solution approach

Even though a church is the owner of the school’s property and founded it originally in 1950, the school itself is non-denominational today. At our baseline assessment at the end of 2018, the school had three sparsely-furnished classroom blocks each containing two to three classrooms. Also, there were some old latrines, a kitchen and two houses intended for the teachers. All buildings were in a ruinous state and partially in danger of collapsing. For this reason, only two of the three blocks were in use, which led to two grades needing to be taught in one room at the same time. Due to a lack of necessary equipment such as school benches, classes had to be held in an environment that was neither supporting the student’s concentration nor creating an appropriate learning atmosphere.

The condition of the sanitary facilities was also unacceptable. There was only one unhygienic latrine available for all students and teachers. The lack of sanitary facilities wasespacially a problem for girls in regards to their monthly period. On top of all of these impediments, the access to clean water was also very limited. Due to a lack of a well at the school, the students either had to walk to the well in the village to get their water, or use dirty or no water, which favors the outbreak of several diseases.

In 2019, together with our local partner KIDA, we started building two new gender-separated sanitary facilities, each with six stalls. Accompanying the opening of the two facilities, WASH-workshops were held by Viva con Agua Kampala to teach the children basic hygienic rules in a playful manner. For further hygienic improvements, we built lavatories for girls in 2020 to guarantee that they have a safe, hygienic and private place during their period. To ensure access to clean water we had to take water samples to examine the quality of the water and find the perfect spot for a well that could provide clean water for the school. Finally, we were able to built a hand-operated well on the school ground. At this point we would like to thank Viva con Agua de Sankt Pauli for making this step possible.

Another problem we addressed was that the buildings were in danger of collapsing and were not large enough. At first, we had planned to construct a new building and renovate the other two existing building. During the renovation process, it turned out to be more cost-efficient to tear down one of the buildings and rebuild. Finally, two new buildings, with three classrooms each, were built and one building with two classrooms was renovated. They were finished in January of 2020. All the buildings were newly furnished since the old furnishing were partly broken and unusable. For this sake, we provided wooden beams which some of the parents then processed to new tables and benches.

Long commutes and difficult terrain are factors that can contribute to teachers deciding to quit their positions at a school. To prevent this, we built two teacher accommodations. The two houses, separated by gender, were handed over to the school management in July 2020 with in a small ceremony.

Ultimately, we are planning on building a small administrative unit for the school management and teachers so organizational processes can take place more efficiently at school.

As soon as the situation (currently affected by the COVID-19 pandemic) allows it, we would like to offer workshops for students, teachers and parents and establish a committee that finds and implements methods for a long-lasting upkeep, maintenance and – if needed – repair of the buildings. In addition, we are planning training courses for our project partner to support and professionalize them in matters of project organization, monitoring and impact measurement.

All these measures contribute to a better school quality leading to a more focused learning. This contributes to our main goal, the fourth SDG of the United Nation’s Agenda for sustainable development: ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.