Accomplish Children’s Trust is halfway through building a new classroom block at St Agnes school, funded with a £8500 grant from Hazel’s Footprints Trust. The classroom is already in use! With student numbers up 17% this academic year, the need for the space is strong. The region has been suffering greatly with flooding and progress at St Agnes is lifting spirits.
In 2023, Hazel’s Footprints Trust agreed to fund a new classroom block at St Agnes secondary school is in Kasese, western Uganda in the impoverished Rwenzori region. The building is progressing well but slowly. This is because, in true African style, the classrooms are already being well used despite not being finished! Fortunately the roof is now in place as Uganda is experiencing torrential rains right now. The desperate need for these classrooms is because this academic year (February-December) the number of students has risen from 360 last year to 420 this year. Its good reputation is spreading. About 20% of these pupils have a disability and St Agnes continues to specialize in teaching deaf or blind children.
Flooding in Kasese
It has been an extremely challenging time in Kasese in recent weeks. The torrential rains have made the river, coming down from the mountains, which flows through Kasese, into a raging torrent, causing flooding and mud slides. This is an unfolding situation but it’s clear that there has been some loss of young lives and hundreds of people have been displaced as their homes have been swept away. Camps for the displaced have been set up and the Red Cross and Ugandan Government are helping. Accomplish Children’s Trust schools are safe, and the pupils and staff who were there are also safe, but several of the children were at their homes and are now in the camps.
Lots of crops have been destroyed, which will add to the already tricky challenge with increasing food costs. 2024 has been an El Nino year which has exacerbated extreme weather conditions. Climate change is being felt in a dramatic way. At the moment it’s a bleak picture. The people of Kasese have coped with flooding before in recent years. They are remarkably resilient and are already talking about how to cope with changing climate conditions by planting more trees. Cooking with wood means trees are regularly chopped down and not replaced.
A bright beacon in challenging times
Accomplish Children’s Trust have confirmed that our grant and the classroom block being built is a bright beacon within this community. It demonstrates that this remote area has not been forgotten, a message which is so important for Kasese right now, especially for their children. Accomplish has deep roots in the Rwenzori region and has, in the past, provided flood relief. Accomplish is not a relief organisation but outreach work, conducted by all of its projects, means they have the network to get aid to remote areas. (Such as food, soap and buckets to this family in 2020). It’s too soon to say as yet, but Accomplish may need to do this again. In the meantime, the Accomplish schools are providing a safe haven and the new classroom block is part of that.
