School honours sponsors

Isaac Newton High School, Masaka has named two buildings in honour of school sponsors.

The Lily van Haelen Hostel has been named after a prominent Humanist who lived in South Africa. Her family knew that she wanted part of her estate to be used to support Humanist projects in Africa. After rejecting a number of projects in Southern Africa which did not match their mother’s ideals, a member of the family visited Isaac Newton High School. Impressed by what he saw, the family made the decision to donate the money the school needed to construct a much needed girls’ hostel.

The building has transformed the lives of the girls living there. It houses 76 girls in small family rooms with 6 girls sharing and has adjoining toilet and wash room facilities. The facility provides a safe home environment for a number of single and double orphan girls and should greatly improve their prospects of completing their schooling. Boarding opportunities are widely sought in both state and private schools in Uganda. Families feel that, if their children can get into boarding, they will be safer than would be the case if they were walking long distances to school. They will also be well fed, have access to health care and facilities for study in the evenings and at weekends. The school is confident that the new hostel will improve the educational attainment of girls at Isaac Newton School, and hopes that it will provide a fitting and lasting memorial to Lily van Haelen.

The Alistair Berkley Science Laboratory has been named in honour of a young Law Lecturer from the Polytechnic of Central London whose life was tragically cut short in the Lockerbie PanAm aircraft bombing. Alistair Berkley showed deep concern for injustice wherever he saw it and developed a love of Uganda while working in the Law Department at Makerere University. During his short time there, he became concerned by the lack of awareness of the rights of wives in Uganda to inherit the assets of their husbands. His parents have subsequently maintained a charity in Uganda, which provides legal advice on land inheritance rights to help rural women. As Humanists, Alistair and his family, shared a strong commitment to education and to science, in particular. They believe that young people should be introduced to scientific rationality, which respects the need to carry out research and to consult authoritative evidence before reaching conclusions. It is fitting, therefore, that the school has chosen to name its science laboratory after Alistair Berkley. The facility will enable generations of young people at Isaac Newton School to be taught science on the basis of conjecture and the evaluation of evidence from controlled experiments. The school hopes this will be a fitting legacy to Alistair’s ideals.