Greetings from Yamba Abaana!

Dear Friends, Family, Donors, and Supporters of the Rubanda Solidarity Nursery and Primary School of SW Uganda,

As we come to the holiday season and turn our eyes towards the end of a peaceful year and the start of new beginnings, we wanted to send our friends a note of appreciation for all that gets done in your name and highlight the growth that has occurred at our school thanks to the tireless efforts of the staff, teachers, and administration, as well the adaptability and resiliency of the students.

There have been changes over the past three years as we all learned to navigate through Covid and the school has returned stronger than ever.  We are currently at record attendance as the infrastructure improvements for both dormitories and classrooms over the past ten years have allowed the school to accept 375 students this year, an increase from 330 last year, and the children have never been happier to have such a wonderful school to attend. Reflecting on the ups and downs of the past year allows us to look to the future with a sense of purpose of what can be done to keep the brains, bellies, and hearts full.

We greatly appreciate all your donations last year to offset rising food prices. As you may remember, the price of food at our school has more than doubled since 2021. Thanks to your generosity, we were able to raise funds and reduce the burden that the families of our children have had to shoulder. Unfortunately, inflation in Uganda has not abated and we must continue to seek donations and look for new ways to assist the school in remaining food secure. This includes the school project we alluded to in our last letter where additional farming land was purchased for the school so that they could grow their own vegetables.

The school’s Keep Gardens Green initiative to allow our school’s land to continue to be used for farming both staple and new produce during the shutdown has kept the staff engaged while also allowing them to raise money and store surplus food in our pantry for the new school year. By keeping our gardens well maintained even when the school was closed, we were able to seamlessly transition these gardens back into use now that the school has fully reopened. We are currently growing sorghum, beans, sweet potatoes, and some other crops to increase diversity in the kitchen and they look amazing! Your donations and our farming land ensured that the school remained open for the entire school year instead of closing early and sending the students home.

The proof of our success in keeping bellies full can be seen in our 2022 test results for our graduating 7th graders. Out of our class of 28 students, 26received top marks and two received second marks. These are, quite simply, amazing scores! So much so that the local government found it fitting to acknowledge and affirm the uniqueness of our school and led to an overwhelming increase in requests for enrollment from new students in the community. Full bellies – full brains!

In addition to our food security efforts, we have continued to modernize the school to best prepare our students for the technology they will be using in their future careers. This is paramount to ensuring that our students are at the front of Uganda’s technological renaissance and remain strong and competitive when applying to university or for a job. While phone use is ubiquitous throughout much of Uganda, this is the first time that some of our friends have used or been introduced to a desktop computer for writing, research, and data preservation. They have enthusiastically absorbed the information in class and continue to make progress familiarizing themselves with everything a computer can do. We are excited to watch our friends increase their technological literacy and knowledge. The school lab was instrumental for us this year as our teachers designed school specific content and have more resources available at their fingertips than ever before.

Our next major project, we are thrilled to announce, will be to upgrade the kitchen facilities at the school in 2024! As the school has grown to include both more primary students and a nursery school, our kitchens have struggle to cook food quickly enough to feed the students during lunch, do not have enough space indoors during the wet season, and get far too hot to comfortably work in during the dry season. There just aren’t enough cooking stations available to get everything done and the cooks have had to construct cooking pits outside and around the kitchen to prepare meals on time. Our goal is to raise enough money to move the primary school kitchen to a different location so that the smoke no longer blows directly into classroom windows, is large enough to support the new size of the school, and provides the right environment for our cooks to remain protected and comfortable no matter the weather!

We will send out more details and information about this in our December newsletter and everyone is excited to renovate our primary school kitchen into a larger, cleaner, and more functional one.

The holiday season emphasizes the importance of family, friends, community, and the needs of others. Let us spend the rest of the year with a renewed sense of purpose for continuing our students’ education and easing the burdens of those who carry such heavyweights. Together our generosity remains strong, and we offer our heartfelt thanks to all of you who ensure that our children remain educated throughout these unusual times. Your continued sponsorships and additional donations not only kept the school functioning as a remote education hub during Covid, but you also allowed us to hit the ground running when the school reopened. Your donations also fill the hearts and provide faith to everyone who needs it. Faith that the school would reopen. Faith that the students were able to afford tuition and books when they returned. Faith that the fibers that connect us remain strong and untangled.  Knowing that our community is supported and that the school doors are once again open means more than can be expressed in these short pages. We sincerely hope that you will keep Yamba Abaana in your thoughts and in your plans for donations.

The support of our generous sponsors, friends, family and donors are the backbone of this effort and 100% of your donations are tax deductible and go directly to the school, the kids, and these projects. With your help, we can continue to offer our students and their families the opportunity to lift themselves into a successful and brighter future. We are humbled by your continued support and love and cannot wait to share with you the next chapter of accomplishment in a book of grace that we are all writing together.

In Service,

The Board of Yamba Abaana:

David Sharp, PhD
Daniel Bedard
Theresa Hurtt
Philip Busch
Bruce Murray, MD
Morgan Lopuchovsky