November2004Letter

See also [Eva]

See also the previous [September2003Letter]

Torino, November 8th 2004

Hello to all the visitors of www.nkoni.org

Our school is growing year by year: we have 4 classes by now, we have gained the judicial acknowledgment of the government and can now truly call ourselves an elementary school!

This year (2004) has been the second year in which we've had the 7th grade, the preparatory grade for the teacher education. This is also a great success, as we can in this way choose the students with the greatest potential thanks to their more in depth knowledge during the 7th year at school.

At the end of 2003 we have had good results, and a great group of students have been able to begin secondary school, so that at the moment the group consists of 13 students, some in the third year and some in the first. Two others have already concluded the fourth year of apprenticeship and are in the middle of their educations for university professor and nurse.

The first of our students that have reached the title of professor, Michael, has already been teaching at our center for two years!

We already have 3 adoptions for 2005, and others might be made before december (final date to give the assignment to the school board who selects the students who may start the higher education).

The Nkoni center is becoming ever more a reference point for the people in the area: for the past years hundreds of children have recieved not only free education (our school is completely free) but the children - often orphans, lacking one or both parents - also recieve a warm meal daily. For a year now we have been adding a good dose of sugar, giving the children a decisively more nutricious meal.

Now we would like to give them this dose of sugar not twise a week but every day. To go from giving sugar twise a week to every day of the week would cost a total of another 2400€ a year (for 9 moths of school).

There are still many things left to do: after 5 months of draught in southern Uganda at the Nkoni school, the water pump is broken: children and women have to go kilometers on foot to get water for their meals. The repair costs ca. 600€.

Many children suffer from various hygenical problems, from skin-related to ulcers, to internal infections that makes it difficult for them - in lack of an adequate cure - to attend school.

An initial provision of medicins to create a stringato medical service will require a minimum of 700€.

We would like to promote the project "a blanket for every student". The idea is to give every student in the school (to begin with, and later perhaps every child in the area!) a fire-retardant blanket to keep them from sleeping on a straw mat on the bare floor. This needs 15€ for every blanket, and 500 children frequents the school!

The Nkoni Sport project has until now recieved only a crumb of our financial attention , by force of neccessity (first we fill the bellies, then buy the text books, then comes the balls for football and basketball). But after a letter from a girl on a basketball team (...Madam, we have won the torunament, even if we were the only team without uniforms!...) we have to make a great effort to gratify these proud young ones' to their origins, whatever they may be! Cost of uniforms, basketball nets, balls for football and basketball, musical instruments for the choir: 750€

Still more ambitious, we wish to give legal assistance to the orphans who risk loosing the ownership of their land when no written documents that testify their hereditary right exist. This project costs 200€ for each legal practice, at the best of our estimate (when only a vsit to the land ministry, a request for the documents attesting the legitimacy of the heir or a notarial transcription is needed.)

But we do not lack perseverence, nor do those at Legambiente Ecopolis, nor the tutors at Nkoni who follow the young students, nor the director of the school who has managed it for 10 years now, nor the families who dedicate their time to maintaining the school and its improvement (some classrooms are still made of mud and need extensive maintenance after every rain season).

The awarness of doing the right thing is derived from the fact that this project is being developed without a fixed presence of external responsibles, without cooperating offices on the place, without big wages paid to each and everyone, not to us here, nor to them down there: everyone does their part because they believe, we in conviction, they in giving a chance to their own people.

The craftsmen and the professors are payed - but our students are there for "free" to teach in our school for two years after they have gained their diploma; the women who take their turn cooking are volunteers, they do it because the believe that they can help the dousins of orphans there: the old who follow the students to secondary school do it becasue they know that this is a rare opportunity to give a future dignity to some of them.

We aquire the materials to construct the school, but it is the people of the place who together construct the school with their own hands. In that way, the funds wich we gather - however limited - all go directly to the different projects, which little by little become reality.

Because it isn't time that we lack: what we need is your help and you confidence!

Thank you.

Eva Biginelli