Community

38 Million children in the US wake up every morning and have the opportunity to attend school

41 million children in sub-saharan Africa wake up every morning and do not have the opportunity to receive an education, as there is no school for them to attend.

I spent my last 3 full days (2/15 , 2/16, 2/17) in Uganda working on building a school in a remote village outside of Kampala, Loufuka Village. 135k of the proceeds raised from this fundraising challenge went to building this school, through a program called Building Tomorrow (an Indianapolis based non-profit organization). Building Tomorrow has financially supported the construction of 8 schools in Uganda, and now this school funded by Off the Mat, Into the World will be the 9th - providing an education to over 400 children from 7 different villages! The current nearest school for these children is 5-6km away - which may not seem very far (3 miles - 4miles), but when there are no cars for transportation and the children have to walk this distance each way - it is unlikely they are attending school.

4.2 acres of land has been purchased for this school. The plan is to build a 7-room schoolhouse, housing for the teachers (this will be the first of Building Tomorrow's school to have housing for the staff), and eventually dorms to transition it into a boarding school. Once the school is built the government will supply the salary for the teachers and oversee the day-to-day operations.

The children, parents, grandparents, local neighbors are all volunteering their time - between 25 and 25,000 hours of manual labor - to construct this school. Once the primary school (ages 6-12) is completed, the children will then receive a free education.

With our donations they were also able to purchase 2 brick making machines, similar to that at Shanti Uganda (the birth center). In the picture above you can see me struggling to pull down the lever to make the brick....yeah I only got so far before I recruited the help of 2 others to complete the task. This school is the first to use the new, cost-effective, interlocking brick system (sort of like Lego's:). Once the bricks for the school are completed the machines can be used by the people of the local villages to make bricks to sell for income - I love this idea of continually paying it forward!

A huge smile spread across my face as we drove up to the school site. At least a hundred men, women, and children were gathered to greet us - the biggest turnout Building Tomorrow has ever seen for one of their school projects! The pure excitement and joy that overcame me was overwhelming - once again that concept of seva - "selfless" service enters my mind. There is no way this is "selfless" service - yes, we are providing for them a means of education for their children - but they are providing to me the incredible gift of a life-changing experience - I am truly helping to make a difference in the world -for which I am deeply grateful.

After a brief introduction we dispersed into different projects - brick making, carrying bricks, hoeing, breaking up rocks/dirt. There were sooo many children running around the construction site we decided to form a standing assembly line to transport the bricks from one end of the site to the other where they were needed. Yes, it would have been faster for us to carry the bricks individually, but where is the fun and community building in that? The kids loved it because they were involved, we loved it because we were interacting with the children, and the "workers" loved it because we were bringing them their bricks:)! You can see part of the brick transport line in the first picture above.

Monday was a long, very hot day, doing physically challenging work.....when was the last time I carried bricks across a long distance? When was the last time I used a hoe or a shovel? When was the last time I pushed a wheelbarrow full of dirt over a fair distance? Hmm...considering I live in a loft complex with no yard to tend to.....I can't tell you the last time I had myself involved in this type of work! But I can tell you this....it felt so good to get my hands dirty in Uganda's red clay earth and I even have blisters on my hands to prove my hard work:).