| Schools | |
 Edirisa Nursery Schools Edirisa's first nursery school, at Bufuka (Lake Bunyonyi) opened its doors to children in 2005, initially in a church adjacent to Bufuka Primary. In March 2006 we introduced our own nursery building with three classrooms, thanks to the fundraising of Edirisa UK, a donation from municipality Piran, and help from Morje Nursery School (Slovenia). We have about 130 children in three age groups: 3-year olds (baby class), 4-year olds (middle class) and 5-year olds (top class). The curriculum was set up with the help of our Australian volunteer Nicole Savage, a professional nursery teacher. In contrast to most of the Ugandan nurseries we strongly promote child-centred learning. Children are valued as individuals and their entire well-being is considered in planning and providing education.  The second nursery school was built at Kayabahinga (Lake Bunyonyi) in 2009. It will open for the first time in February 2010. Bufuka Primary School  Bufuka Primary School has been educating children of Lake Bunyonyi for more than 70 years and has about 550 children and 15 teachers. With seven classes (from P1 to P7), there can be close to 100 children per class. Edirisa has been working with this governmental school since 2002 when we built The Heart of Edirisa on the school land. Since then we have tried to improve the educational process in Bufuka by providing workshops for children and teachers alike. The results are clear: in 2006 Bufuka was officially named the best rural primary school of Kabale District! Not bad for a school that was once the laughing stock of the lake area... Kyabahinga Primary School  Kyabahinga Primary School is situated across the lake from Bufuka. The school started in 1959 and has about 350 children and ten teachers. Recent successes of Bufuka Primary have spurred increasing migrations of pupils from Kyabahinga to Bufuka. Edirisa is trying to stop this through more and more involvement with Kyabahinga Primary. We have been working there since 2005, initially only organising swimming lessons. This grew to a list of other workshops in 2006, and the start of a sponsorship program in 2007. Ryabirengye Primary School  The third Smiles school is Ryabirengye, situated in Bukinda (about 40km away from Lake Bunyonyi). It was built in 1990 and has about 320 pupils. It joined our program in 2008, after a year of existence of Teach Inn, a volunteer hotel supported by Edirisa. Nyakasiru Primary School  The latest addition to the schools with a Smiles program is Nyakasiru, the second volunteering location of Teach Inn. It has about 430 pupils and is the first Catholic school we work at (the other three are Anglican). photo: Andrea Stultiens, Georgina Blay & Edirisa archives | |
| 10. Oct. 2009 | |
