This year 2022 sees Mission Direct move to work at Kumi Primary School. This is a State Primary School which was founded by Missionaries at St Stephens Church in 1926. Some of the original buildings are still in use together with additional classrooms from 1980s which is when it was handed over to the Municipality. There are over 1,000 children at the school and this will double over the next ten years. Whilst it has 17 classrooms 8 of these are occupied as teachers homes and all are in poor condition. The 1926 classrooms are surprisingly basically strong but they have large and low windows which makes them fairly unusable in poor weather as the wind and rain penetrate through these and parts of the roof. All the classrooms at the school are in poor condition. Our project over 2022 and 2023 will be to relocate the teachers into new or alternative accommodation and to renovate the old classrooms to make them fit for purpose.

The building in 2022 is to complete construction of four homes for teachers and their families at Kumi Primary School. This will ensure retention of good teachers at the school and their availability for the childrens lessons which run from early morning. The school has over 1,200 pupils and the demand for school places is always growing with the countrys young population.

This is a two year project with a budget of approx. £60,000 to complete

More detail on the Kumi Primary project would be

a) The construction of new teachers homes to free up classrooms.

b) The refurbishment of classrooms.

To refurbish the classrooms properly and make them fit for decades of use we would need to

1) Remove the rooves and take down the upper courses of brick / blockwork.

2) Install a ring beam and upper brick courses

3) Erect new rooves

4) Reduce the size of the widow apertures and fit metal shutters

5) Replace the floors.

6) New blackboards (painted cement in Uganda!)

7) Decorating the classrooms

Whilst volunteers cannot work at roof level much of the preparation of the timbers is done at ground level and most of the other work is volunteer friendly.

We have scored the school against the criteria / projects we considered in 2016 before we started at Bazaar School and it comes a close second to Bazaar where we have been working for the last five years.

If at the end of the project there is any surplus it will be allocated to our general project development fund, designated for future projects in Kumi. Any Gift Aid element will be used to fund Mission Direct's general operational and administrative costs.