Nine & Ten

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Friday couldn’t have come soon enough, so the community of Kyeitabya decided to party early.

A kasiki—an overnight Bugandan celebration in anticipation of a big day—kicked off the commissioning activities of the Building Tomorrow Academy of Kyeitabya, the tenth site opened in Uganda by Building Tomorrow.

Kyeitabya’s celebrations come on the heels of the Building Tomorrow Academy of Nakaseeta’s grand opening ceremony held six days prior. Planning for both projects began in 2010 using environmentally friendly interlocking stabilized soil block (ISSB) technology.

“What you have done here, we need more of,” Minister of State for Higher Education J.C. Muyingo told parents and school construction committee members gathered in Nakaseeta. “Development begins with education.”

The Building Tomorrow Academy of Nakaseeta was built in partnership with Architecture for Humanity through their 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom.

Leaders in both communities made public pledges to support their respective academies. Nakaseeta’s LC3 chairman promised parents to provide a supply of desks and reading materials. Former Building Tomorrow education support officer and current member of the local town counsel, Apollo Muganila, pledged to ‘ensure that people come to associate quality education with this academy in Kyeitabya.”

Funding and design of the Building Tomorrow Academy of Kyeitabya was furnished by the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame. A team of Notre Dame students visited Kyeitabya in 2010 to begin construction of the academy.

“We are here to celebrate the beginning of a journey,” Gasana Emmanuel told his peers in Kyeitabya. “And now it is time for us as parents and this community to get serious in supporting our children.”

In a school planning meeting earlier this week, scores of parents at Kyeitabya indicated their desire to begin their primary school studies for the very first time at the new Academy.

“For those of you parents who wish to come and study from this place, I will personally buy your first uniform,” Building Tomorrow Country Director Joseph Kaliisa promised. “Education is a basic right, and this is your chance to be a role model to your own children.”

To date, Building Tomorrow has opened 70 classrooms serving nearly 60 villages throughout Uganda with the capacity to house over 3,000 students. In 2012, Building Tomorrow made a commitment through the Clinton Global Initiative to construct 60 schools and provide teacher training for over 450 educators.

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