How anger drove a refugee to help others

“In order to raise money for material such as chalk, pens, pencils, books and text books. I, and other members of the group, who had by now increased to 150, would dig people’s shambas. From the payment we would get, we bought exercise books, text books, pens and pencils for our students.”

The Education Director says this programme helped improve the grades of the children living in the camp. “However, our major challenge was that the girls were not benefiting as much as the boys. They were dropping out of school because of the long distance and lack of scholastic materials.”

To avert this situation, they encouraged some of the girls that were still in school to continue and the group of 52 students that they taught in the first batch, all passed well in their 2007 Primary Leaving Exams. The worst performer passed in the third grade.
But despite their good performance, the camp had only one secondary school whose standard was not good.

Seeing others through school
Munyambaza along with other members of the association arranged for the renting of a hostel in Hoima Town to accommodate some students so that they could access better education.

He says after working for three weeks in people’s shambas, they raised Shs300,000 and rented a house in Hoima town. “We brought 33 students into this hostel and enrolled them in different secondary schools. By 2011, we had 31 students sitting for Senior Four and Senior Six exams.”

stumwebaze@ug.nationmedia.com