Real Partners Uganda and Tree of Life Ministries:
Where We Are Today (cont. from home page)
Mustard Seed Teacher Dorcus and her Primary 2 class are housed in temporary buildings
.........While RPU funds a variety of projects in the community, our focus is to support the Ugandan leaders at Tree of Life Ministries (TOLM) in establishing a sustainable learning community that serves both vulnerable children and the adult population, especially women, who struggle under grinding poverty. A nursery and primary school, Mustard Seed Academy, was established in 2009 four years after RPU began working in Uganda. Its 25 full-time employees serve 355 children, 94% of whom come from families too poor even to send their children to "free" government schools. The school is operated entirely by Ugandans at Tree of Life Ministries and provides comprehensive care (feeding, healthcare, clothing, and supervision) to its 331 day students and 24 boarders. After just two and a half years of operation, MSA won second place for overall school quality in a local contest among 18 area schools. They lost first place in large part because Mustard Seed is housed in temporary, wooden buildings. For the same reason, MSA still lacks permanent licensing.
Support for children (240) and teachers (9) at MSA occurs through sponsorships from American families, civic organizations, schools and churches through the RPU Sponsor A Child (SAC) and Sponsor a Teacher (SAT) programs. The number of donors to RPU totaled 330 at the end of 2010, up from 40 in 2005. Grants from small foundations provided an additional $50,000 in 2010 to support MSA and other TOLM projects. Over the roughly 30 months MSA has been operating, we have managed to purchase two pieces of land near the Lukaya town trading center close to the homes of MSA students. A 2.5-acre nursery campus has two buildings, constructed with an environmentally friendly technology called Interlocking Stabilized Soil Blocks (ISSBs), the first of their kind in the area. In addition, an innovative poultry facility was built with a combination of traditional materials and a non-traditional design that enables both food production (eggs) and hatching chicks (for sale) to occur in the same facility. A 7.5-acre site was purchased in July 2011 and stands ready to be developed for the permanent primary school campus. The master plans and designs for individual buildings are the work of Dr. Ssengooba Kasule, a Ugandan environmental architect trained in China and Germany.
Over the six years that RPU has worked in Uganda, we've assembled a team of people who share a vision, not only for providing excellent education and comprehensive care for OVCs, but also for related projects that move TOLM toward sustainability in environmentally sensitive ways. The team includes Ugandan teachers, support staff, administrators, and a social worker at Mustard Seed Academy. An architect, water engineer, medical specialist and agricultural coordinator serve in the development and operation of related programs. And parents are engaged directly through an active 12-member PTA executive committee, while community leaders serve on the TOLM Board of Directors. In the US, a lawyer, two scientists, a social worker, several educators and a business leader serve on the RPU Board.
A unique aspect of the projects supported by Real Partners Uganda is the collaboration between Ugandan leaders and American Board members in decision-making and implementation. It has resulted from our continuing efforts to empower Ugandans and develop working relationships over a period of years. The relationships are manifest in frequent communication, careful financial management at both ends, and strict accountability and transparency in all things supported by RPU. This kind of relationship across cultures is extremely rare in situations where Ugandans run the day-to-day operation of a project supported by foreign funding. In a country where corruption is a way of life in many sectors of society, we have established, with some persistence, a working, collaborative system that ensures good stewardship of resources.
At this point in our history, the urgent need for RPU and Tree of Life Ministries is to raise funds for capital development of the nursery and primary school permanent campuses. We have developed a master plan for the nursery campus and TOLM began construction in 2010. For the primary campus we have identified the elements of a master plan. A total of $500,000 is needed to complete the construction of buildings and infrastructure (solar electric, a well and pump, a water collection and management system, and waste management facilities. Each campus also is or will be a site for income-generating activities that lead to sustainability.
The completed campuses would serve about 120 pre-schoolers (3 levels, 35-40 kids per level in one section) and about 500 primary children (7 levels, 70 children per level divided in two sections per level). The great majority of children are OVCs. The two campuses would also be the sites of continuing education courses, especially using the Campus Life Centre on the Nursery Campus that we are building with a US government PEPFAR grant.
We envision Mustard Seed Academy as a community learning center that demonstrates technology for third world countries and models innovative strategies that can be learned by children and adults to address challenges of poverty in the broader community. We have a good start in implementing the vision. TOLM agriculturalists are growing the herb Artemisia to produce tea that is anti-malarial and immune boosting for children and adults. A poultry project is underway to increase the protein content of the children's diet, to produce fertilizer, and to generate income. We are composting humanure and chicken manure and collecting urine-- all to enrich soil for the crops grown on campus. We are building with special blocks (ISSBs) that are fabricated on the site, don't have to be fired and require little cement in construction. We are cooking with stoves that cut typical fuel use in half and reduce air pollution even more dramatically. Our teachers use active learning methods in the classrooms to get beyond low-level memorization to teach the higher learning functions of application and problem solving. We support outreach by our students through the Music Dance and Drama program to provide theatrical experiences for other children of Lukaya. Each drama teaches lessons about health, nutrition and personal safety (Child to Child Program). Together, all of the initiatives described above will enable Tree of Life Ministries to reach the final goal of an operation that is totally self-funded.
With vigorous, well-supported programs in place and with a team of specialists in Uganda and the United States, RPU and Tree of Life Ministries are ready to construct the permanent campuses with supporting infrastructure of a model school that serves vulnerable children and the broader community. Want to help? Click here.....
