EP Magazine

Brookwood builds a school in Bunyama

The Brookwood Partnership has built a school in Bunyama, north-west Uganda, in partnership with Build Africa. It has been a humbling journey, explains Kate Martin, managing partner

Working within the Independent Education sector, Brookwood wanted to support a charity that would benefit generations of children and help give a solution to long-term poverty. We started our fundraising work with Build Africa in 2009. As part of our Corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy we wanted to give something back and be able to demonstrate to our teams the huge impact they could make to generations of children in a remote area of Uganda. We have raised just over £80,000 and not only built a school but worked with the village community to build a self-sufficient management structure of education for Bunyama.

Before this time, school in Bunyama consisted of a thatched roof structure held up with wooden sticks. The dirt floor was dusty in the dry season causing coughs and eye irritations and wet mud in the rainy season. The floor harboured ‘jiggers’, a flea that burrowed into children’s feet, and snakes lived in the thatch roof regularly joining a class and frightening the children.

Two hundred and seventeen primary aged pupils shared one latrine with no privacy and a high risk of contracting infectious disease. There were no walls to display work, no classroom facilities or learning materials. Often in the rainy season school had to be abandoned and children sent home.

Thanks to Brookwood and Build Africa, Bunyama is now a seven-block, purpose-built school, complete with staff accommodation, a head’s office, a store room, water tank, girls’ and boys’ latrines and even a kitchen where a very basic lunch is enjoyed by pupils who previously had nothing to eat during the day.

A devastating lightning strike on a school within the region this year killed 19 pupils, but this risk has been eliminated at Brookwood’s school with the provision of a lightning conductor on the roof. Each classroom is equipped with desks, each child has a seat, the five teachers, including the head, have blackboards, some text books and the local community have cleared an area for a football pitch and netball court.

HIV/Aids and teenage pregnancy education is taught throughout the school and with Africa reporting more than 7,000 new HIV infections every day in 15 to 24-year-olds the visible and social implications of education will benefit the whole community.

School numbers have risen to 471 as more parents are encouraged to send their children to school and dropout rates have significantly fallen, particularly for girls, who now have the privacy of their own latrine. The sustainable school now has a local management committee of parents and villagers who all play an active role in supporting their school and seeing the benefits that education gives their children.

Prior to the school construction lunch was not provided for pupils and the majority did not have anything to eat during the day. Now a very basic lunch of cassava ormaize is prepared on wood burning stoves daily, ensuring that no one goes hungry. The village community has worked hard and planted crops in the school grounds to support the continued provision of lunch.

I cannot begin to explain how humbling this experience of working with Bunyama’s children, parents and Build Africa is. To witness the poverty, the difference in lifestyle and the sheer joy on the children’s faces is extremely emotional. They are desperate to learn and the provision of education is the only way out of the poverty trap. Many children are orphans due to HIV/AIDS and their struggle and determination is unbelievable. The head teacher, Victoria, is inspirational and how she manages to teach 471 children with five teachers in seven classrooms each day is amazing, but she does it with gusto and is so very proud of her school and what it is achieving. The whole experience for Brookwood has been nothing but positive. Every employee has got behind the project and made some sort of contribution. Many clients had supported fundraising activities and Brookwood’s operations team has highlighted how education and life in the UK differs to that of a child in Uganda through assembly presentations. Brookwood and Build Africa have truly given back and made a difference to generations of African children and feel very proud indeed.