Help the Alao Girls get back to school by putting a roof on their classroom!
Girls Education and Empowerment
Last Spring, Alao Primary School in Northern Uganda lost its roof during a hailstorm. This is a call for support to the Alao Girls Roofraisers get back to school and avoid early marriage and sexual violence–an all too common fate for girls who drop out. Eleven primary school girls are working to re-roof and equip their only public school for 1200 students. Your donation goes directly to put the roof back on and get the girls and their classmates back to school in January 2022.
The Alao school conditions:
URGENCY of this project:
- When girls are out of school in N. Uganda, they are subject to early marriage and sexual violence;
- A recent report confirmed that 23,000 girls between 12 and 18 have presented pregnant at local clinics in this region since the schools were destroyed;
- School starts in January and it is urgent that the classrooms be roofed and the walls stabilized immediately;
- The government has no plans to repair this school;
- The community depends upon schooling their children to lift themselves out of poverty and to build peace after a generation of war in the region;
- This campaign is led by girls and benefits boys and girls equally.
Background
Alao Primary school is a Universal Primary Education center located in Lela Teng village, Obangangeo parish, Acaba Sub County, Oyam district in northern Uganda. The area was devastated by war beginning in the 1980s and the local community depends upon education to lift them out of deep poverty and violence.
The total enrolment of the school was 1269 before the Covid-19 outbreak. On 24 April, a heavy rainstorm in the district damaged important infrastructures in the already poorly equipped and neglected public primary school. Classrooms, teachers’ offices, furniture, equipment, and documents were destroyed. The school is still devastated, with students who can brave it forced to take lessons in roofless classrooms, or under trees on the school compound. Teachers are often forced to release the students to run back to their villages once it threatens to rain. A group of girls who remain in class have organized. They are concerned that most of the girls in their school now prefer to stay home, and are susceptible to completely dropping out, in a community that already experiences high rates of child marriage.
You Can Help the School:
- Create a safe learning environment;
- Cut down on lost class hours and absenteeism;
- Reduce early marriage, pregnancy, sexual abuse;
- Restore 648 girls to their studies in a safe and secure environment ;
- Encourage more children to enroll in school from the surrounding villages;
- Improve the retention, attendance and completion of learning for boys and girls;
- Support girl’s advancement in society through their extra curriculum activities to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and abuse, which is widespread in rural schools and is one factor keeping girls out of school;
- Give girls support to address menstrual hygiene through skills for making their own re-usable pads.
Local partner using local businesses:
Facilitation for Peace and Development (FAPAD), based in Lira, northern Uganda will coordinate the project including acquisition of supplies, and girl’s extracurricular activities. Support is from the American Council on Women, Peace and Security. FAPAD will provide on-site management, accounting, and regular reporting while working with the girls and the school administration to ensure value for money, proper book-keeping and reporting to ACWPS. FAPAD will also equip the girls with rights-related skills and information, and ensure they are supported to grow and sustain their innovations into adulthood.