Well...we finally opened! Crikey!

Below we see the first 60 primary school pupils arriving for our first day at the Amagezi Education Centre!

These first pupils are from Nawangoma Primary School in the sub-county of Budondo - a school situated in a beautiful but quite inaccessible location at the top of a hill. However, despite the distance they had to travel, all 60 pupils arrived at school very early and were ready to be collected by the Soft Power trucks! Here they are arriving....a very exciting moment for everyone who has been involved in this project!


When they arrive, the pupils enjoy a quick warm up game which is great fun and allows them to relax in their new environment. Many of the head teachers who visited said that their pupils would feel intimidated in such an amazing building - so we do our best to make them feel
at home!


Following the game we split the 60 pupils into 5 groups and they go off to their first learning session of the day. Each session is almost an hour long and at the end we bang a big drum and they rotate to their next session!

Here we see a group enjoying their session in our Theatre/Drama department. This department will be used for highlighting issues that pupils learn about in Social Studies. Here they are watching a DVD about 'Life Choices' which highlights issues surrounding peer pressure and HIV/AIDS. During the DVD the pupils decide which 'choices' the characters make and we follow the progression of the story and then discuss what they have seen afterwards. This method of using audio/visual equipment is something the pupils have never seen before in their desperately under-resourced school. They loved it!


After their first session the pupils rotate to the next department. Here we see a group heading up the spiral staircase to the Agriculture department - at the top of the tower! Here they learn about sustainable agriculture and organic farming. These issues will not only help the pupils pass their exams, but will be extremely useful in their day-to-day life as most of them are from farming families. They are quite brave to even go up the tower - when we had a sensitisation day for head teachers, some of them refused to go up as they were too scared of the height! It really brings home how much simple things make an impact - many of these pupils have never been in a two-storey building!

In our Art department, pupils get to use art equipment in a way they never could at school due to lack of resources. Here the pupils are learning about primary and secondary colours whilst creating a huge picture onto cloth. At the end of term we are stitching all the pieces together from the 22 schools and making a back-drop for the theatre.

After three sessions...it's time for lunch! Schools in the rural communities here in Uganda are unable to provide lunch...so these pupils really enjoyed their lunch hour!

After lunch and a quick energising game, its back to work...here we see pupils enjoying the ICT department. None of the rural schools we work with have any form of ICT equipment (most do not have electricity) but these pupils have heard of 'computers' and are so excited to finally get to use one for themselves. It is wonderful to see how thrilled they are at even typing their names! Once we get the internet at the Education Centre, there'll be not stopping them!

And finally, we see some pupils enjoying their lesson in the Science department. It is difficult to stress how incredible the pupils find this session. They are amazed by the life-size skeleton and by the anatomicl models of human hearts/brains/lungs/eyes etc). But they are most excited about looking through a microscope!

And then all too soon it's time for them to leave! We play one last game and then the pupils go back to school...but they'll be coming again next term for the second of four developmental learning sessions in our departments!

We would like to thank the children of Nawangoma primary School for being such a wonderful first group!