Help Back Education

Building A Classroom for Kiryowa

About the Kiryowa Community Development Initiative

Since 2011, GIVE International, in partnership with generous donors and hard-working volunteers, has partnered with community-based organizations in the village of Kiryowa, Uganda on improving health and education opportunities for its residents. Nine years ago, 70 percent of Kiryowa’s population lived in extreme poverty (less than $1/day) and could not meet their basic needs for food, water, shelter, sanitation and health care.

Beginning, brick by brick, with the construction of a new primary school – and working alongside local community-based organizations with the delivery of health care, malaria prevention initiatives, child-nutrition programs, and Family Kit distributions — we are implementing a holistic approach to community development. The positive impacts have been noticed by the local Ugandan authorities, and they have called the Kiryowa initiative an “exemplary success”.

Here’s a snapshot of what we have achieved together so far…

6 new classrooms constructed
2 teacher-houses built, so educators can live conveniently in Kiryowa
2,800 village residents treated at our free mobile health clinics
8,000 breakfasts supplied to 85 primary stuents, giving them the energy to succeed in the classroom
500 Family Kits (including bed-nets) distributed to families in need, providing tools for improved health
3 pit-latrines constructed, creating a clean and private space for students to use the washroom
50 (3-seater) desks constructed for functional student learning
1 playground built to encourage social and physical development
180 school kits distributed, ensuring students have the tools to learn
2 x 10,000 litre rainwater-harvesting tanks installed to provide water for hand-washing and gardening

Our Achievements

“Girls are more likely to miss out on school than boys and this is accentuated more among disadvantaged, rural families. Poor, rural girls are forecast to be the slowest to have school places, with Unesco projecting it will take until 2086. It means that the five-year-olds who are now missing out on beginning school will be grandmothers before universal primary education is achieved.”

– 2014 Report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

Why Creating Equitable Access to Education is Important

Lack of access to an education, especially for girls, restricts opportunities later on in life and weakens a community’s ability to develop and escape poverty. When girls receive an education, it reduces child mortality and malnutrition; improves family health; postpones the age of first marriage; decreases fertility rates; enhances women’s role and participation in society; provides education to prevent HIV/AIDS; strengthens a family’s survival strategies; and contributes to the economic stability of a nation by providing its citizens with the tools and knowledge to become economically productive.

The partnership between GIVE International and our many generous donors and hard-working volunteers has already moved the village of Kiryowa towards improved health and education opportunities for its residents. Students have a safe and conducive space to learn, enrollment is going up for boys & girls, children have food in their bellies, teachers have functional housing in the village, and equitable access to education is being achieved. Together, we’re changing statistics for the better… one child at a time.