Our links with Uganda

For the past five years, WGS has had links with Lords Meade Vocational College, a school in Uganda which provides free education to disadvantaged children in Jinja, the country’s fourth largest city.

Every year, up to three WGS students spend their gap year at Lords Meade, teaching and helping with building or restoration projects. They also get involved in community work at orphanages, nurseries and medical centres. 
 
As Lords Meade relies entirely on voluntary donations, each year students at WGS organise a range of activities that help to raise much needed funds for their partner school. Past exploits have included hair braiding, staff gunging, discos and spelling competitions. The money raised goes to help the essential work that goes on at Lords Meade.


Latest News from Uganda

During this term we have been fundraising for our link school in Uganda, Lords Meade Vocational College. Money has been collected from the Non-Uniform day, the Inter-Form Fundraising Competition, the sale of Ugandan jewellery as well as a School Disco and the recent Battle of the Bands. I would like to thank all the teachers, students and parents for being so positive and generous. A special thank you  to the Fund-Raising Committee for all their help as well as Gabi Ryan and Alex Wake who are going to spend 6 months in Uganda in 2011. We have fundraised over £5,000 which is wonderful. This amount of money will make such a difference to our link school. LMVC are going to use it to buy a piano and build a classroom for music lessons. Some of the money will be spent on simple musical instruments. Miles Lawrence and Sophie Young are two of the gap year students over there for six months. They have started a choir with the help of teachers and the piano will be so useful to them. Miles is going to teach students and teachers to play, and Lords Meade has just introduced Music into their curriculum.

Three gap year students are currently working at Lords Meade Vocational College in Jinja, Uganda. They work there for three days a week and two days on other community projects in the area. Some of the money raised this term will go to these projects too. Rachel Davies Foote for example works at a HIV clinic and with street kids. She has travelled into villages giving them advice about HIV and has even given her first injections. This will be good training as she and Sophie are going to Medical College when they return. All three of them have spent a week helping to build a primary school 30km from Jinja, in a small village with no water or electricity! To find our more from our gap students, follow their blogs at: 

www.rachinuganda.blogspot.com.   www.milesinuganda.blogspot.com.

All three gap year students are doing remarkable work in Jinja and they are gaining an experience which is life changing. Miles has started a newspaper at Lords Meade and it will contain information about sport, music and drama from WGS. Mr Hall, the new English teacher, is travelling to Uganda at Easter to continue to develop the link and support the WGS students there. The Friends have paid for this trip and they continue to be supportive of our link with Lords Meade.

In March, we were lucky to have a visit from the Head of LMVC, Mark Malinga. He stayed with us for over a week and contributed to lessons and assemblies. He brought with him two students from Lords Meade, Rosemary and Francis. Rosemary is an orphan and Francis’s father died when he was young. They are both sponsored at Lords Meade by an organisation called Tofta. Having students from Lords Meade was a first and such a special experience. The students stayed at several students’ houses and followed a WGS timetable. We thoroughly enjoyed their company and learnt as much from them as they did from us. The British Council paid for their flights and they did manage to get home even though they were flying with BA!

The winning form of the Inter-form fundraising competition was Big Six Y who raised £ 541 for their Sponsored Silly Walks. Other forms who did particularly well this year were Big Six X, 10E for a sponsored silence, 8R for bag packing in a supermarket, 7R’s Ice Cream Van, 8Q’s Stocks, 8P’s gunging of teachers and 10D’s raffle to change places with the Head for a day. James Anderson (7S) won and will swop places with Mr Darby. It should be an interesting day for both of them!

http://www.rachinuganda.blogspot.com/