Matale Community Development Project Summary
(Infrastructure Development, Matale Sister School Program, Sponsor-a-Student Program)
Matale, Uganda
Introduction & History
The Harambee Centre is helping St Andrews Senior Secondary School located in Rakai District, Southern Uganda to build infrastructure. The school has more than 300 students, 57% of whom are girls. About 52% of the students are HIV/AIDS orphans. The school badly needs physics, chemistry and biology laboratories, and accompanying equipment. By government decree, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics are now compulsory for all grade levels in Uganda. Matale also lacks text books.
Southridge High School in Beaverton, OR is working with the Harambee Centre and has adopted Matale as its sister school. The sister school with St. Andrew’s S.S.S. entails: cultural exchanges with students, staff members, administration and parents. Both communities are excited about the possibility as this expands educational opportunities for students and community at both schools through curriculum and infrastructure development. This will also fosters service learning opportunities for Southridge High School students. Through the work of Katie Reed, now a Southridge graduate (Spring 2006), we have been able to provide student scholarships for more than twenty AIDS orphans at Matale. The sister school project is a result of Marko Mitchem, a former Southridge teacher, who traveled to Africa as part of the Fulbright Exchange with the Harambee Centre in the summer of 2002. We have had three University of Portland graduates work at Matale in the summer and fall of 2005. One young woman, Sarah Dang, a recent graduate in the School of Nursing returned in the late summer of 2005 after establishing a community health clinic at Matale. The other UP graduates, Art Chambers and Nate Sherfinski served as teachers at St. Andrew’s. Art taught English and assisted in mathematics classes. Nate taught computer classes and assisted in the installation of computers to create a computer lab for the school.
In the summer of 2005 Jackie Goldrick, Harambee Centre President, led a group of three teachers from Southridge on a trip to Uganda to cement this relationship with St. Andrew’s Matale S.S.S. and the community. Nike has donated a large amount of sports equipment that has been used to extend sports and extracurricular activities to students who previously could not enjoy them. The school was also recently gifted with three laptop computers from Nike, and six others were sent in the summer of 2005. The school will be starting regular student and teacher computer training. Hewlett Packard donated seven printers, a scanner, and two digital cameras that are helping us to establish the printing needs of the school's new computer lab. This will help prepare both students and teachers to succeed in the information economy of the twenty-first century.
Current Work
Jackie Goldrick (Harambee President) led a group to Uganda in August of 2006. The group included, for the first time in Harambee’s history of cross-cultural exchange trips, high school students. Three students from Southridge made up the travelers which also included two Southridge teachers, Jesse Scott (Harambee Board Member), Carol Larsson (Harambee Board Member), Julie Resnick (Intercultural Trainer & Consultant), and Thomas Lwebuga (Harambee Board Member and Vice-Chair).
During this trip in August 2006, interviews were conducted with students for potential selection in the Sponsor-a-Student program and observations of the developments of a poultry project that is attached to the school in order to increase school revenue/sustainability.
Upon returning from Uganda, Julie Resnick began working with the Harambee Centre and countless community members in Portland to create Zoom Uganda, a photo-voice project wherein twelve female HIV/AIDS orphans sponsored by Harambee (and students at St. Andrew’s S.S.S.) documented their lives through a twenty-four hour photo/journal. Harambee hosted a special opening of the Zoom Uganda exhibit on December 17, 2006 to raise funds for science lab facilities at Matale. To learn more about Zoom Uganda, please visit: www.zoomuganda.org.
Teachers together in Matale View of Matale countryside
Community Celebration
View of Matale Countryside
Harambee Centre
P.O. Box 6617
Portland, Oregon 97228-6617 USA
Telephone: (503) 710-8264
info@harambeecentre.org