Construction Begins at Building Tomorrow Academy of Kyeitabya, Supported by University of Notre Dame

KAMPALA—Building Tomorrow, Inc. (BT) is proud to announce the commencement of construction at the BT Academy of Kyeitabya supported by the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture through the generosity of Matthew and Joyce Walsh. The Academy, designed by University of Notre Dame Architecture students will be BT’s ninth in Uganda and construction is expected to take approximately 12 months. Once open, the BT Academy of Kyeitabya will join the nearly-completed BT Academy of Sentigi as the second location supported by the ND community.

Leaders in the Kyeitabya area have already demonstrated a fierce commitment to bringing a new, permanent school structure to their village. After BT passed up the location in 2008 on account of a poor access road and the high prices of land, a community mobilizing committee was established to remedy both situations. Eighteen months later, lay leaders effectively persuaded local authorities to grade the road, three acres of land were donated for the Academy and over 20,000 hours of labor were pledged to support construction efforts.

Kyeitabya is located 45km north of Kampala in Kiboga District. Approximately 450 children in immediate proximity of the Academy are currently without access to a permanently built classroom. The Academy will be BT’s second to be built using a newly-adopted interlocking soil-stabilizing block (ISSB) produced on site, entirely from local materials.

On 23 May 2010, six Notre Dame Architecture students and two DePauw University students will begin a three-week stay in the village of Kyeitabya, working alongside community volunteers to build foundation walls, implement a compound design and produce just some of the 24,000 ISSB bricks required for the structure. You can follow their time in Kyeitabya online at www.buildingtomorrow.org/blog.

BT is an international social-profit organization encouraging philanthropy among young people by raising awareness and funds to build and support educational infrastructure projects for underserved children in sub-Saharan Africa. BT works with a college network of nearly 30 chapters nationwide and hundreds of grade schools through an innovative service-learning curriculum, Sit for Good.