We have for many years financially supported Uganda Humanist Schools. They are currently facing a perfect storm of crises due to slow post-Covid recovery, drought and high food prices, and high energy costs due to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The schools need financial help if they are to survive until local families can pay full school fees again. Please read the update and appeal below and consider donating if you feel able to.
Humanist Schools in Uganda need our Help
Uganda Humanists have worked hard to establish schools with an explicitly Humanist ethos. Isaac Newton Humanist School was set up in 2005, at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, to help orphan children and has gone on to enhance the life chances of generations of children in a poor rural community. Since 2019, Uganda Humanist Schools Trust (UHST) has raised funds to construct the first brick-built primary school for the traumatised community of Katumba village near the Congo border, where over 100 fathers were killed in communal fighting in 2016. The school adopted the American Humanist Association’s Ten Commitments as its guiding principles. It now educates 700 children, who had no previous access to schooling.
The Ten Commitments adorn the outer wall of Katumba Kindergarten
Since 2019, UHST has financed a new school in Kanungu (also near the Congo border), which experienced the world’s worst cult killing of 800 men, women and children, who were poisoned and burnt to death in a locked church. In 2021 we purchased two failed primary schools, one evangelical Christian and the other Muslim, to create inclusive primary sections in each of our two high schools. The schools we support are committed to the Humanist ethos, they are affiliated to Uganda Humanist Schools Association, are registered non-for-profit organisations and have ring fenced bank accounts that are annually audited by UHST accountants. The four new primary schools need help until they become established to pay their teachers, provide school meals, and bring their infrastructure up to standard.
There are 15 Humanist Schools in Uganda, at various stages of development. We would like to help other schools but do not want to spread our funds too thinly. Before Covid struck in 2020, our two established high schools each enrolled over 600 children and were achieving decent standards of education in a caring setting. These schools had risen to 5th out of 35 schools in their Districts, and Isaac Newton School ranked 40th out of 3,600 high schools in Uganda for post primary value added.
However, in the past two years the schools have faced extraordinary challenges. Livelihoods were devastated by the strict Covid lockdown and family savings were exhausted. They now face food shortages and high prices caused by climate-change-induced drought and high fuel prices caused by the Russian war on Ukraine. Many parents have fallen into substantial arrears with their children’s school fees and schools struggle to pay teachers and buy food for children’s meals.
The schools provide inclusive education based on reason, compassion and tolerance. They were beginning to become beacons for Humanism in Uganda and internationally, but the current crisis threatens their very existence. If Humanists around the world would come together to help them, then we can see them through their current challenges, and ensure that the huge efforts they have made over almost two decades have not gone to waste.
UHST helps all the schools by providing funds for such things as books, science and other learning resources, water, sanitation (handwashing and toilets), sanitary pads, decent dormitories for boarding needy orphans and for sports, the arts, music and dance and school field trips.
Child at Katumba Parents’ Humanist Primary School demonstrates a digger made in their science class
The focus of this appeal is to raise funds to help the Uganda Humanist Schools financially through to 2023, by which time we hope that economic conditions and school fee income will have recovered.
It would be particularly helpful if fellow Humanists would commit to making regular monthly payments (this can be done by bank standing order or through PayPal). Such regular payments will enable us to send regular monthly sums to the primary schools to underpin their running costs until they become self-sustaining.
Below are links to reports following our recent visit to the schools:
Isaac Newton Humanist Schools (Primary and High School)
Mustard Seed Humanist Schools (Primary and Secondary School)
Katumba Parents Humanist Primary School
Kanungu Humanist Primary School
Details of how you may make payments to save these path-breaking Humanist Schools can be found on the UHST Donate Page. All donations will be acknowledged and we will, if you choose, send periodic updates on the schools’ progress. Updates are also posted in the News section of our website: ugandahumanistschoolstrust.org.
