Iowa City group builds school in Uganda

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Iowa City group builds school in Uganda

Rural school should help improve lives

By Rob Daniel
Iowa City Press-Citizen

Youths in Uganda will get a new school to finish their education, thanks to the efforts of an Iowa City-based non-profit group.

The Namirama Community Secondary School, located in a rural section of eastern Uganda near the border with Kenya, will be finished by the end of summer 2006, said Liz Whiston, president of Education for Development. Her group is providing the funding for the construction and supplies of the new school. The $30,000 school will serve 200 Namirama students who now attend school in a mud brick building with a dirt floor and iron roof with no windows or doors, she said.

"Even if they had the money to buy the supplies, they wouldn't have the building to secure them in," Whiston said.

Whiston is a 2001 West High graduate who graduated this year from Smith College in Massachusetts with a degree in classics. She spent seven months in mid-2004 as a volunteer teacher at Kikaaya College, a secondary school near Uganda's capital in Kampala, where she learned how the Ugandan education structure works.

Publicly funded education was introduced in 1997. However, secondary education remains a privately funded endeavor. It is expensive, with tuition costing $30 a year, more than what the average Ugandan makes in a month. The system also is one that remains more open for boys than girls, who tend to stay home to do house work and raise younger siblings.

Whiston said along with the building, she hopes her group can open doors for more Ugandan children to further their education. The group's members have solicited donations, mainly from family members, and applied for small grants. The group also is partnering with Rotary International and its group at City High, Interact, to raise an additional $10,000 for supplies. Interact held a fund-raising tea party and silent auction in December that raised $2,300.

"We were just looking for someone to help out," said Tina Pontarelli, 18, a 2005 City High graduate who was co-president of Interact last year.

Pontarelli said the club is working with Rotary to match the amount of money that was raised.

Whiston said she hopes to encourage young people in the United States to become involved in helping others around the world. This includes raising money to provide scholarships for at least 30 Ugandan secondary students, as well as other students in Gabon and Sri Lanka.

"I think being an American in a global world (is important)," said Whiston, who will teach in South Korea for a year before attending law school at the University of Iowa. "With my generation being computer literate, we're forced to think globally at earlier stages."