Education

Esuubi Foundation School

In 2017 when the closest Primary School to our initial home was a 30-minute walk away, the Esuubi Foundation school simply started as a home school for our (initial) 10 children and was conducted in the outdoor eating / play area of our home.

Knowing that a large number of children of the village were not receiving an education either through the distance to the nearest school or simply not being able to afford the school fees it was decided to rent a local building, convert it as best as possible and open the doors to the children of the village – this was when the Esuubi Foundation school was first formalised in 2018.

Without this option, the reality for the majority of the children in the village (assuming their parents could afford the school fees) for this 30-minute walk was doing it on an empty stomach, without adult supervision, regardless of the weather conditions and equally as important the road conditions – it’s either a dirt or a mud road depending on your luck.

The rented building initially only had dirt floors which the kids had to kneel on with not enough benches, tables or chairs, the building didn’t have a single toilet so the children (and staff) had to walk 300 metres away to use the toilet in our main home (not much fun in the rain) and all meals had to be cooked at the main home and walked down to the school.

The Esuubi Foundation school grew to include 8 different grades complete with concrete floors, benches for every student, toilets and bathing area, a kitchen that provided morning tea and lunch, a nurses station and a boarding section and most importantly an opportunity for an education and then COVID hit forcing the closure of all schools nationwide in the first half of 2020.

We chose to stop renting the building used as a school and home schooled the children who boarded with us whilst we provided study for home packs for the children of the village who attended our school as ‘walk-in’s’ from the village.

The forced closure of the school thanks to COVID was a blessing in disguise as it bought forward our dream of building our own school on our land. Thanks to generous donations construction of our purpose built school started was completed before the 2021 school year started.