Workmen are setting up camp at Isaac Newton High School in preparation for the installation of new high-tension power cables. This is part of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development’s rural electrification programme. The scheme will bring much needed renewable hydro-electric power to the school and to the villages of Kateera, Kinyerere, Mirembe and Kibisi, where most of the school’s children live. The total cost of the project is £53,000. The Uganda government will cover £42,000 of this, using funds from the World Bank. However, the need for the local community to find 30% of the costs was proving to be a bar to their participation in the scheme. Peter Kisirinya approached UHST for help and, following an appeal, we received generous donations to cover the outstanding £11,000 from UHST supporters in Leicester Secular Society and one working for Google in California.
The installation of a reliable power source at the school will provide lighting for over 200 boarding students at night and provide power during the day for computers and audio-visual equipment. The local community will have electricity for lighting at night and to operate radios, TVs, power tools and other appliances and equipment. Isaac Newton High School’s prominent role in sourcing the funds has greatly enhanced the school’s standing in the community.
Hosting meetings related to the power project has made the school the natural focus for community activities. For some years Peter Kisirinya’s vision has been to use the school to enhance the welfare of the wider community. A report we produced in 2013 (https://uhst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/INHS-Economic-Impact-Report-Nov-13.pdf) highlighted the huge contribution the school was already making to the economic regeneration of this impoverished rural area.
Peter’s latest initiative is to follow up the Power Project with the establishment of a new Community Based Organisation (CBO) to promote the economic and social development of the area. They held their first meeting, attended by 27 members of the community, on Monday 2nd January and a constitution was agreed the following Sunday. They adopted the name “Isaac Newton Community Based Initiatives: Improving Lives Through Sustainable Agricultural Practices” and voted in members of a governing body.
The aims include:
Improving the quality of life and poverty alleviation within the Community;
Providing access to credit facilities, farm inputs and markets by the Community;
Sensitizing the community about aspects of life improvements including Human rights and social freedom;
Conservation of the environment through practices that promote sustainable agriculture;
Establishing a cooperative society which will find suitable markets for produce and engage in value addition programs for the produce in order to raise incomes;
To introduce within the community secular ways of living to avoid discrimination based on religion, gender, tribe, political and other divisive tendencies.
The CBO, while owing much to the school, will be wholly independent. Its management board will be responsible for accounting and finance and it will have a separate bank account and the power to borrow for projects. The sorts of projects, which the community may consider, include: maize milling, coffee grading and marketing and the purchase of shared storage facilities and agricultural equipment.
This whole community enterprise has been made possible by the creation of this Humanist School at the heart of the community and the huge esteem and trust which Peter Kisirinya has earned over the past ten years. It is a tremendous testimony to Peter’s dedication and it is wonderful to see his very ambitious early humanist visions coming to fruition.
The growth of student numbers at Isaac Newton High School has placed pressure on accommodation. This has been keenly felt in the Girls’ Hostel. Designed for 96 students, with 6 to a room, the hostel has been accommodating over 140 girls, with bunk beds side-by side from wall to wall. This is not only uncomfortable for the girls, it is dangerous. Overcrowding makes exit more difficult in the event of fire and diseases spread more quickly through the student community. Fungal infections of the skin have beome more common as have upper respiratory infections.
An obvious answer would be to turn students away from the school. However, Isaac Newton is the only secondary school for many miles and the local community has embraced the school as its own. Families, therefore, demand that the school takes their children and senior staff find it hard to say no to them. Furthermore, there is a strong need for boarding accommodation, particularly for girls. We are finding that boarding students perform better in exams than day students. They escape the chores they would be expected to do if they lived at home, digging, housework, fetching water, food preparation and cooking, so they have more time for school work as well as having access to books, computers, lighting at night and desk space to work. Orphan girls, in particular, are protected from the sexual harrassment which they can sometimes experience in the villages.
As a first phase of building work to expand the school, St Louis Ethical Society in the USA has valiantly raised the money to build a second girls’ hostel. The new hostel, whose construction is now well advanced, will relieve pressure on the existing hostel and eliminate overcrowding. Whereas the existing hostel has rooms that are open to the roof space, the new hostel will separate each room off by having a ceiling through the building. With each room being a sealed off space, the girls will suffer less noise disturbance from other rooms. It will also be harder for mosquitoes to carry malaria from an infected child to others throughout the hostel and the spread of other air-borne diseases will also be more difficult.
Large buildings are costly. The new hostel will cost around £32,000. This covers land clearance and levelling, foundations, construction of walls and roofing, windows and doors, electrical wiring and fittings for lights, plastering and painting plus the construction of an associated toilet block, wash rooms and pipework, drainage and cess pits and preparing pathways and a garden with trees around the building.
UHST and the staff and girls of the school are very grateful to members of St Louis Ethical Society who have raised the entire costs of this project. Their efforts have been led by Ed Schmidt, who has visited the school on a number of occasions, and Kate Lovelady, the leader of the Ethical Society. At a recent meeting of the group Kate showed pictures of the Humanist Schools in Uganda and gave an inspiring address about the history of the Ethical Sociaety’s involvement with UHST and the schools. Below are links to the pictures of the schools, an MP3 file of Kate’s speech and a link to the website of the St Louis Ethical Society.
UHST and the school are looking forwarding to welcoming a representative from St Louis Ethical Society to open and name the new girls’ hostel during the next International Friendship Visit to the Humanist Schools in Uganda in early July 2017.
Plans for a new Multimedia Block: Isaac Newton School is growing rapidly. School numbers are approaching 450 and the school has been struggling with a first year class of over 100 students. It is clear that to keep classes down to a reasonable (by Ugandan standards) class size of around 50, the school needs to add a second stream. In order to do this, the school must have additional classrooms and our intention is to help the school to improve the standard of teaching and learning through better building design.
Working with a local architect, the school has come up with a plan for a large new building that has 3 classrooms, an additional fully-equipped science lab with adjoining prep room, and a room where teachers can prepare material and undertake professional development, with a side room with a high-speed, low-cost RISO printer and secure storage for laptops and other equipment.
Senior 1 students trying to listen to their teacher, but with no pictures to aid their learning.
Uganda has an equatorial climate and is prone to heavy storms every 2 or 3 days. With existing classrooms, which have corrugated iron roofs, the noise of the rain is so loud that teaching has to stop during heavy rain. Also with larger classes students often find it difficult to hear what the teacher is saying or to see what is written on the chalk board.
In order to overcome these problems the new building has been designed with a sound-insulated ceiling, microphones and speakers to improve audibility and ceiling-hung data projectors so that high quality images can be projected onto a screen and teachers can take advantage of materials (including pictures, animations and videos) drawn from the internet. This mean that the teachers will be given access to the internet in the teacher development room and the whole building will have security doors and windows.
Once it is built, UHST will organise with the school a professional development programme to train all teachers in the use of the new technology and to show them how to embed audio-visual resources from the web into their lesson presentations. It will make possible a major shift in teaching away from the use of dictated notes. The training programme will be extended to teachers in the other Humanist Schools in Uganda who are members of Uganda Humanist Schools Association.
It will also complement other programmes in the schools to improve private study facilities for students. As Humanist schools, we feel that it is important to foster independent learning, where students are less reliant on being told things by teachers, and are empowered to learn using independent, authoritative sources of information. We have been flooding the Humanist schools with text books; we have also introduced a wide range of literature and a Reading for Pleasure Programme, the schools have a computer network with a wealth of off-line resources taken from the internet including: the huge RACHEL repository of non-fiction information taken from Wikipedia, the Khan Academy videos for mathematics and science, a large set of e-books, including classic literature, drawn from the Guttenberg collection and large numbers of videos, including Zefirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
The total cost of the Multimedia Block and Large-Group Teaching Project at Isaac Newton School will be £42,268. We are applying to other charities for £25,000 of matching funding, but this will leave £17,268 to be raised from this appeal.
If you would be willing to help we would be most grateful to receive donations:
By bank transfer to: Uganda Humanist Schools Truspt, Lloyds Bank, Sort Code 30-95-91, Account 00455909 (please email to let us know so we can track the payment and send you a confirmation of receipt).
Or by cheque sent to: UHST, 31 Greenmeadows Road, Madeley, Crewe, CW3 9EY. If you are a UK taxpayer and would like us to clain Gift Aid, which boosts your donation by 25%, then please make sure you include your postal address and say that you are happy for us to claim Gift Aid.
If the appeal is successful it will enable a huge leap forward in the standard of education at Isaac Newton High School.
Posted: January 12, 2017 by Steve Hurd
Humanist school power project promotes community cohesion
The installation of a reliable power source at the school will provide lighting for over 200 boarding students at night and provide power during the day for computers and audio-visual equipment. The local community will have electricity for lighting at night and to operate radios, TVs, power tools and other appliances and equipment. Isaac Newton High School’s prominent role in sourcing the funds has greatly enhanced the school’s standing in the community.
Peter’s latest initiative is to follow up the Power Project with the establishment of a new Community Based Organisation (CBO) to promote
the economic and social development of the area. They held their first meeting, attended by 27 members of the community, on Monday 2nd January and a constitution was agreed the following Sunday. They adopted the name “Isaac Newton Community Based Initiatives: Improving Lives Through Sustainable Agricultural Practices” and voted in members of a governing body.
The aims include:
This whole community enterprise has been made possible by the creation of this Humanist School at the heart of the community and the huge esteem and trust which Peter Kisirinya has earned over the past ten years. It is a tremendous testimony to Peter’s dedication and it is wonderful to see his very ambitious early humanist visions coming to fruition.
Posted: December 23, 2016 by Steve Hurd
St Louis friends help ease Isaac Newton Hostel crisis
An obvious answer would be to turn students away from the school. However, Isaac Newton is the only secondary school for many miles and the local community has embraced the school as its own. Families, therefore, demand that the school takes their children and senior staff find it hard to say no to them. Furthermore, there is a strong need for boarding accommodation, particularly for girls. We are finding that boarding students perform better in exams than day students. They escape the chores they would be expected to do if they lived at home, digging, housework, fetching water, food preparation and cooking, so they have more time for school work as well as having access to books, computers, lighting at night and desk space to work. Orphan girls, in particular, are protected from the sexual harrassment which they can sometimes experience in the villages.
As a first phase of building work to expand the school, St Louis Ethical Society in the USA has valiantly raised the money to build a second girls’ hostel. The new hostel, whose construction is now well advanced, will relieve pressure on the existing hostel and eliminate overcrowding. Whereas the existing hostel has rooms that are open to the roof space, the new hostel will separate each room off by having a ceiling through the building. With each room being a sealed off space, the girls will suffer less noise disturbance from other rooms. It will also be harder for mosquitoes to carry malaria from an infected child to others throughout the hostel and the spread of other air-borne diseases will also be more difficult.
UHST and the staff and girls of the school are very grateful to members of St Louis Ethical Society who have raised the entire costs of this project. Their efforts have been led by Ed Schmidt, who has visited the school on a number of occasions, and Kate Lovelady, the leader of the Ethical Society. At a recent meeting of the group Kate showed pictures of the Humanist Schools in Uganda and gave an inspiring address about the history of the Ethical Sociaety’s involvement with UHST and the schools. Below are links to the pictures of the schools, an MP3 file of Kate’s speech and a link to the website of the St Louis Ethical Society.
TITLE: Why us? Why not us?, Kate Lovelady, Leader, 4-Dec-2016
An update on exciting new developments in our Uganda Humanist Schools Project, and some of the cosmic questions raised when we contemplate the different circumstances of people around the world.
Photos (pdf) to accompany the presentation.
Get the .MP3 file
St Louis Ethical Society Website
UHST and the school are looking forwarding to welcoming a representative from St Louis Ethical Society to open and name the new girls’ hostel during the next International Friendship Visit to the Humanist Schools in Uganda in early July 2017.
Posted: December 14, 2016 by Steve Hurd
Appeal for Multimedia block and Large-group Teaching Project at Isaac Newton
Plans for a new Multimedia Block: Isaac Newton School is growing rapidly. School numbers are approaching 450 and the school has been struggling with a first year class of over 100 students. It is clear that to keep classes down to a reasonable (by Ugandan standards) class size of around 50, the school needs to add a second stream. In order to do this, the school must have additional classrooms and our intention is to help the school to improve the standard of teaching and learning through better building design.
Working with a local architect, the school has come up with a plan for a large new building that has 3 classrooms, an additional fully-equipped science lab with adjoining prep room, and a room where teachers can prepare material and undertake professional development, with a side room with a high-speed, low-cost RISO printer and secure storage for laptops and other equipment.
Uganda has an equatorial climate and is prone to heavy storms every 2 or 3 days. With existing classrooms, which have corrugated iron roofs, the noise of the rain is so loud that teaching has to stop during heavy rain. Also with larger classes students often find it difficult to hear what the teacher is saying or to see what is written on the chalk board.
In order to overcome these problems the new building has been designed with a sound-insulated ceiling, microphones and speakers to improve audibility and ceiling-hung data projectors so that high quality images can be projected onto a screen and teachers can take advantage of materials (including pictures, animations and videos) drawn from the internet. This mean that the teachers will be given access to the internet in the teacher development room and the whole building will have security doors and windows.
Once it is built, UHST will organise with the school a professional development programme to train all teachers in the use of the new technology and to show them how to embed audio-visual resources from the web into their lesson presentations. It will make possible a major shift in teaching away from the use of dictated notes. The training programme will be extended to teachers in the other Humanist Schools in Uganda who are members of Uganda Humanist Schools Association.
It will also complement other programmes in the schools to improve private study facilities for students. As Humanist schools, we feel that it is important to foster independent learning, where students are less reliant on being told things by teachers, and are empowered to learn using independent, authoritative sources of information. We have been flooding the Humanist schools with text books; we have also introduced a wide range of literature and a Reading for Pleasure Programme, the schools have a computer network with a wealth of off-line resources taken from the internet including: the huge RACHEL repository of non-fiction information taken from Wikipedia, the Khan Academy videos for mathematics and science, a large set of e-books, including classic literature, drawn from the Guttenberg collection and large numbers of videos, including Zefirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
Click here to see the full plans.
The total cost of the Multimedia Block and Large-Group Teaching Project at Isaac Newton School will be £42,268. We are applying to other charities for £25,000 of matching funding, but this will leave £17,268 to be raised from this appeal.
If you would be willing to help we would be most grateful to receive donations:
By bank transfer to: Uganda Humanist Schools Truspt, Lloyds Bank, Sort Code 30-95-91, Account 00455909 (please email to let us know so we can track the payment and send you a confirmation of receipt).
By internet transfer via PayPal using the link: https://uhst.org/donate/make-a-donation/.
Or by cheque sent to: UHST, 31 Greenmeadows Road, Madeley, Crewe, CW3 9EY. If you are a UK taxpayer and would like us to clain Gift Aid, which boosts your donation by 25%, then please make sure you include your postal address and say that you are happy for us to claim Gift Aid.
If the appeal is successful it will enable a huge leap forward in the standard of education at Isaac Newton High School.