Good Shepherd Elementary School Report 2023
Report by Agnes, Director of the Good Shephard Elementary School, November 2023
“Good Shepherd Elementary school opened on the 5th of February 2023 with 33 children first term and second term 11 more were enrolled, totaling to 44 children now.
Of the 44, 5 children are orphans.
At the moment we have admitted from 3-10 years old pre-school and infants. We have only four classrooms and are all in use, meaning we may lack more classrooms as the children get promoted. All the four classrooms have desks which were donated by Okulaba.org
Our children are taught how to read and write following the national curriculum guidelines. We also provide games like football, netball, volleyball.
Okulaba.org, with the help of PUMA, donated us 4 footballs and three sets of jerseys for three teams which were delivered by Frank and Sophie when they visited us in June this year 2023. Good shepherd fraternity is so grateful to them.
We do music dance and drama, and we bought some two drums, the only musical instruments we have so far. Our children are taught how to grow and care for crops at a tender age since it’s the only way we can get vegetables to supplement our diet.
So far, the children have exhibited progress in different aspects, and I am so impressed, discipline, academic and socialising with each other, since they come from different backgrounds it wasn’t easy to achieve that.
The school is self-sustained! We don’t get any facilitation from anywhere, so we cultivate our own crops for food. We plant maize, beans, cassava, potatoes, mattooke and vegetables. Still, we need laborers since our children are too young.
Our village Kisuna is always affected by the dry spells. These infants cannot carry water from long distance, so I found it wise to buy two water tanks to harvest rainwater, but it was not enough for the whole institution I committed myself to get a loan to dig a permanent deep well to solve the water problem. We are hopeful by the end of 2026 we should have cleared the loan of 10 million ugx (€ 2500).
Our locality basically has peasants, some are widows, single parents, - their only income generation is by crop growing, a season takes 6 months to harvest and sell their produces, most of them fail to pay the little school fee, which we use to pay teachers, laborers and to buy stationery that helps in the teaching/learning process.
Among what we have done at school, we also constructed a cooking stove which saves fuel, protects the environment, and saves resources.
The following are the challenges:
1. We need to seal the classrooms because voices from other classrooms interrupt the teaching/learning process.
2. Plastering (Ceiling) the classrooms outside to stop rain from penetrating the walls
3. To complete the latrines for maximum hygiene
4. We need swings, toys, games to make the children bright up and cheerful
5. Kids lack shoes which is very dangerous for their health, during rainy season and visiting school latrines
6. First Aid facilities in case of any injuries or sickness.
7. We need to construct a granary to keep our dry food e.g. dry maize, beans safe for a longer period.
8. Fencing the school for security purposes. Last term 85 kg of beans intended to feed children were stolen and to protect our crops from animals which eat and destroy them.
9. If the poorest kids could be sponsored it would be great because we have bright but unprivileged and according to my ability, I cannot afford to carry their burden. At the moment I am sponsoring 5 orphans.