Developing co-curricular activities at Mustard Seed

Moses Kamya, the Director of Mustard Seed School, has been making a determined effort to offer a broad educational experience to students at the school. Offering a range of co-curricular activities is an important part of this. Already the school gives students opportunities to participate in a range of sports including football, netball and volleyball. There are teams for boys and girls and the boys team, in particular, has excelled in the District CocaCola challenge cup – winning the cup in 2011. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThey have an active choir, perform music, dancing and drama and, over the past two years they have built up an active scouting group which accepts both girls and boys. At a District scouting event the Mustard Seed Scout group won the competition for camp craft.

All of these activities require some resources. For many the requirements are relatively small, such as drums, musical instruments, sports kit and clothing. The scout group are going through to the national finals for camp craft and they are embarrassed at the moment because they have no uniform. Although the costs are relatively small (£200 for the scout uniform) the school cannot justify the expense given all the other priorities.

The single largest need has been for a sports field. Until recently the school has had to beg for access to the playing field of the nearby catholic primary school. The school has been cooperative but the field has only been free at certain times, when it is not being used by others.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATo overcome the problem, UHST raised money in 2012 to buy land that was suitable for a playing field. This year we paid for the school to hire mechanical diggers and graders to level the land. The work ran into unexpected problems when rock was found close to the surface, so we had to find extra money to bring in explosives experts to fracture the bedrock and an even larger digger to remove the rock. The unexpected extra cost was met by two of our trustees. The good news is that the land has been levelled and grass seed will be sown following the equinox, when the short rains arrive.