Peace Gospel International operates a school in the slums of Uganda’s capital city, Kampala. Here are some shots I took at the school and around the slum colony today. The start of the Ugandan school year is this week, however due to the disruption of somewhat tumultuous elections, our enrollment at the school is a little lower than usual; it will be back to normal next week. However, there were plenty of students to interact with today, and you can just tell they’re sharp kids. As you can see in one of the photos, part of our school here has some challenges with flooding but we have some plans to remedy that.
kampala
Uganda: Kampala “Children’s Hope Center”
In the midst of the Kampala slum colony known as “Katoogo” (see my previous post for context) lies the Children’s Hope Center, an education outreach of Peace Gospel International. The program is operated by locally empowered leadership in Uganda. In its humble facility the center offers a Kindergarten through 7th primary education for about 100 children who would otherwise have no access to education. Several of the children are orphans and stay with our program leader and his family in a make-shift orphan home located in the colony. The program provides the students with school supplies, second-hand shoes and uniforms, and nutritional support including daily breakfast, lunch and clean water. Thanks to a recently successful fundraiser, the past three weeks the facility has been undergoing renovations and improvements to prevent flooding and provide adequate shelter for the students during the rainy season. The improvements include upgrading from dirt to concrete floors, a new roof, permanent chalkboards and other repairs and upgrades to the perimeter of the facility that will prevent flooding and keep the children safe. I was so happy to get to see some of the upgrades already complete or underway. The children, teachers and administrators are so thankful for your support, as they had been awaiting the critically needed improvements for quite some time.
Uganda: Kampala Slums
Before I show you the Children’s Hope Center, I want to take you on a little walk through the slum colony where it’s located. I’d like to give you an idea of the conditions they live in, and to allow you to virtually meet some of the amazingly warm and wonderful souls who dwell here. The colony is situated at the bottom of a hill near the shores of Lake Victoria. Thus, sadly, much of the sewage and rainwater drainage of neighborhoods in higher elevations collects in stagnant pools here and flooding problems are pervasive in the rainy season. My visit was on Ash Wednesday; you will see some of the children of Christian families with the ashen crosses marked on their foreheads.
