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Welcome to Kyabira Primary School's wonderful Volunteer Project!
Why is our
volunteer project wonderful? Because the lives, health and educational standards
of our
children have improved so much since volunteers started coming to
help us!
Kyabirwa School Volunteer Project is a community based initiative (CBO) near Jinja in Uganda
which
offers a safe, happy, inexpensive and reliable volunteering experience
to any kind hearted English speaking person who feels inspired to come
and help us!
Kyabirwa
Primary School is near Bujagali Falls, 4 miles from
Jinja, Uganda. The school's budget is less than $2 per child per year and yet many Ugandan
prices are more than those in the UK and the USA - so this funding doesn't go far! Our experience of the world is very limited because even teachers are very poor. We started this project to bring us much needed help from people in the developed world. Volunteers bring us their expertise, extensive knowledge and more than anything else their altruism and enthusiasm. They inspire us.
A few years ago, the school was
just a few shacks. Then the Uganda electricity company started building a
new dam on the Nile. As compensation to the community for the disruption, the shacks were replaced with brick built,
tin roofed buildings. Whilst these are an improvement they aren't
well built. The concrete floors are too soft, the wooden doors and
shutters are flimsy and the roofs were not properly sealed. The
windows aren’t glazed so red dust blows in all the time.
The Head Teacher of Kyabirwa Primary School is Robinah Musakira. One of our 15 teachers, Moses Owino, is our Volunteer Project Manager.
There
are between 850 and 1,800 children at the school, with classes ranging
from 45 to 200 pupils. Numbers vary throughout the year depending on
families' finances and whether children are needed for farming.
Rural
schools such as ours are the poorest in Uganda, but due to the 'solid'
buildings ours doesn’t look too bad. The average income in Uganda is
£300 p.a. half the average of sub Saharan Africa. Our childrens'
parents - all subsistence farmers - usually earn less than £7 a month.
Many
of our pupils are orphans or partial orphans. Average life expectancy
is 48. AIDS means that Uganda has a huge proportion of orphans -about
1.5 million. Orphans or children unable to live with their parents are
the least privileged in the extended family. They go to poor schools
such as ours, are the last to benefit in the home and do more chores
than the parents' natural children, so are tired and less able to
concentrate.
Parents must provide uniforms, textbooks and stationery, resulting in their
being unable to send all the children to school at the same time. It
tends to be one child this year and another the next resulting in adults of 18 still trying to finish primary school. Of those who manage
to find the money to start secondary school, some are still trying to
complete it at the age of 28. Most who start have dropped out by the end
of Year 2. They need to complete at least Year 4 of secondary education
to be accepted for an apprenticeship.
Uganda Schools have very
few teaching and learning resources. In our school resources don’t even
fill a small room. The school only has about 150 donated reading or
storybooks. Textbooks are expensive so often 5 children have to share
one book consequently pupils spend most of their time copying from the
board.
Teachers non contact time is for marking and planning. Can
you imagine marking 45 -200 books per lesson? Our lack of funding means
that teachers have few basic supplies such as pens, blue tack and board
dusters.
 Our
teachers at Kyabirwa Primary School are positive despite everything.
Their relationships with the children are jovial and caring. Their only
regret is that they can’t give the children individual or group time. At
Kyabirwa Primary School we use positive reinforcement and small awards
to encourage effort and good behaviour. Our children are well behaved
(but they are children!) and fun.
Most
children don’t get breakfast or lunch so their concentration is poor
especially in the afternoons, but now, thanks to this volunteer project, free porridge is provided for
every child. It improves their nutrition and their concentration.
Teachers
lunches and the children's porridge are prepared in the new kitchen - provided through volunteer help. There are insufficient funds to
provide a proper meal, such as posho and beans but it is a great start
and has made a big difference.
There isn’t a school hall
so assembly is on the field where the children can’t sit because the
grass is wet. The small school office has old and sparse furniture some
of which is broken. Teaching and Learning resources are pitifully few.
These are the priorities for the development of our school:
Now that we have electricity in a few rooms, we need more laptops
so that we and volunteers can provide IT lessons for the children (and
teachers!) Secondhand laptops are fine as long as they have Windows XP
or later and sound batteries as we only have a couple of plug points!
 - Teaching and learning resources.
Please see lists compiled by teachers on the Volunteer Documents page.
Please don't bring text books from your home country as they won't be
suitable for our curriculum or match with existing resources. Text books
may be ordered and purchased from the Uganda Bookshop in Jinja. Just
consult the Head Teacher and Project manager who will help you.
- Three more classrooms
- to reduce class sizes which will greatly improve children's
education. Some classes are 100+. Getting numbers down to 50 would be
fantastic and is our goal. We would then also have room for community members to meet - such as the elderly who have nowhere communal to sit and talk.
- Science equipment and raw materials for experiments - desperately needed and detailed on the Volunteer Documents page
- Cupboards and shelving for almost every classroom are very much needed for resource storage.
- Finish building the teacher's accommodation
so that teachers can live at the school and have more time to spend
helping children after school and supervising extra-curricular
activities and start evening classes for children and the community.
- Metal doors and shutters for 4 classrooms. Wooden ones don't last long in this climate. These can be purchased individually or as a whole. We have managed to replace many now - thanks to this project
- Second hand Digital Cameras to take photos to be used as teaching resources.
We need lots of smaller items which are listed on the How you can help
page. Donors don't need to supply all of some needed items. A donor
could supply just a few items of the science equipment we need, or 5 or
10 text books or part of any of the other categories. It all adds up!
But please don't think that you have to donate if you come to volunteer!
We
are deeply grateful for the help we receive, but most of all we are
just very glad that volunteers care enough to travel so far to come to be with us. It has
changed our outlook completely by raising our spirits from the depths.
Thank you all a million times!
All the photos on this website are provided by our volunteers and taken during their time with us.
Read
on to the Volunteer Project page to learn how we are continuing to use
our volunteer project to help our children and ourselves - and how YOU
too might help by volunteering at our school.
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