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Education is a basic capability that enables individuals to be and to do what they want in life. It has the capacity to enable individuals live a reasonable life. Unfortunately, access to education in rural areas is limited in the communities GEP is working in South Western Uganda. Most of the areas are inaccessible and remote and have no schools to equip the children with education. This has led to early marriages among the rural teenage girls which has enhanced poverty and retarded rural livelihoods. Bushure village in Rubanda District did not have any education facility 10 years ago. Girls became vulnerable to early marriages between the ages of 12 and 13 years.
With poor standards of living within the individual households, both the children and older people needed encouragement to attain formal and informal education. With the desire to transform and improve their livelihoods, the community members resolved to have their children educated. However with no school structure, a local church was partitioned into four sections to accommodate four different classes.
CONSTRUCTION OF NEW COMMUNITY SCHOOL
In the long run, the church block was unable to accommodate the pupils due to increasing numbers. The community school served 7 villages, and so the pupil number rapidly grew to more than 50. The local community mobilized to build a new school building using locally available materials.
ST ELIZABETH COMMUNITY SCHOOL TODAY
With the campaign to reduce early teenage marriages, GEP is promoting both formal and informal education in remote rural areas. St. Elizabeth Nursery and Primary School has been constructed in Bushure Village, Mpugu Parish in Rubanda District. The construction of this school has allowed many children to access education for the first time; the school currently has 130 pupils.
However, most children are unable to afford school fees. While it is a collective role for the parents to contribute school fees as a mechanism to raise teachers salaries, it is still a challenge for the parents to raise the recommended fees. Rural communities are substance farmers and, with limited land; rural people are unable to produce enough to feed their families and have surplus to sell.
Many of the children walk 4 to 6 hours to and from school. Many parents cannot afford to provide lunch for their children, the school cannot afford to provide lunches to these children and so many children do not eat until they have returned home.
Through the community school GEP is making a big impact on the community's access to education, however GEP is determined to further improve the quality of education. Currently the school does not have adequate scholastic materials to foster quality learning nor is the school able to afford to pay fully qualified teachers. It is a key challenge for the school to improve the education it provides by employing fully qualified teachers and obtaining better education materials such as text books.
To achieve the education goal in rural communities, GEP has widened its spheres by offering opportunities to volunteers from across the world to volunteer in some of the established schools (click here to see our volunteering page).
In 2023 the pupils at St Elizabeth have received uniforms and new school book thanks to generous donors. In future, GEP also hopes to construct a secondary and vocational institute to enable the pupils who are unable to afford secondary level education to train in skills like carpentry, tailoring, mechanics which enable them develop individual capabilities essential for their future.
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