MOTHER TERESA Nursery School - Oditel is located in Kapelebyong sub-county in Amuria district in Eastern Uganda.
The school has been set up to help pre school children with a main focus on disadvantaged children. The school has a current enrolment of 62 pupils. This may go up or drop.
The school serves children between 2-6 years as a way to prepare them for primary education. The attempt to improve on education in the rural areas lies in the parents/community efforts to prepare their children to cope up with education at primary.
The school is an initiative of parents in the locality, who have for a long time seen children education dropping due to lack pre-primary education.
The school has a focus on disadvantaged children that can be categorised as:-
- Children whose parents are HIV positive.
- Children under the care of grand parents.
- Children with disabilities.
- Children living with HIV/AIDS
- Orphans.
- children who have experienced child abuse and neglect in their families.
The school has employed three teachers ( Mr. Okurut Emmanuel, M/s. Ariono Immaculate and M/s Achan Juliet),who are paid by a small contribution from the parents. These are trained teachers. Two of them are females and one male, the headteacher.
The school is managed by parents' management committees and the administration is headed by a director (Mr. Opolot John). It has a number of challenges that originate mainly from its rural locations. These include:-
- Poverty among the parents many who are not able to fully pay for their financial contributions to the school. The parents contribution is on feeding, school uniform, shoes, learning materials like books and pencils, photographs. Most pupils have had their photographs taken but they are not yet paid for.
- This region was attacked by the Lords Resistance Army rebels and all the community was affected. This has set strong traumatic impact on the community, that is being transmitted to the younger children by actions of the elderly.
- Long distance that the children have to walk every day they come to school. The children will suffer when rains begin in April and end around November. All our pupils walk to school on foot and the farthest is three kilometers and the nearest and the most advantaged is 50 meters.
- Shortage of scholastic materials that would be used to aid/facilitate learning.
- Shortage of play materials for the children. Most of the materials are very expensive and if the cost of these are placed on the parents then the fee would be too high for them to manage.
- Poor feeding of the children at home. Most of the children come to school without breakfast. Although the school gives porridge at 10:00am they would have learnt better if they come from their homed after eating something. The porridge that they are given is less nutritious but that is what the parents can afford. The food food we provide can not support the nutritional needs of the HIV positive children and those who come from very poor families.
- Inadequate/ unsuitable classrooms, learning is carried out in a home of a volunteer who has lent out the structures for the school.
- Early child education is a new phenomena in the rural areas and most of the parents see it as a waste of time and resources to take infants to school for a period of 2- 3 years.
- Low enrollment of female pupils as most parents think that taking a girls to school is a waste of resources because when she grows up and gets married she will benefit the family to which she is married.
- High living costs that is likely to discourage the teachers who earn only 28 US dollars a month form the school, to us this is a great sacrifice. The high cost falls to the already poor parents who have to pay in 8 US dollars to the schools as school fees. This is to low to enable the school run effectively, but raising the fee would have the school have very few from families that can afford.
- Most of the children are from poor families and medical care is poor and they often have to stay long out of school when they fall sick. Its will be worse if they fall sick at school. There is no means of transport for then and the school is not in a strong financial stand to meet medical bills.
- The area has for a loons period been having Karamojong cattle raids which had crippled the animal rearing activity in the area.
- The people are mainly farmer who depend on subsistence farming which depend very much on the rains, which they have no control in.
Our pupils through the efforts of the teachers, parents, guardians and the school administration are
picking up in learning new things more than their counterparts who can not afford.
Contact information
MOTHER TERESA NURSERY SCHOOL-ODITEL
Website: www.trustug.blogspot.com
C/o Dr. Eyudu Patrick
P.O.BOX 370,
SOROTI
Uganda
Director: *Opolot John *Tel +256782131918
Email: opolotjohn@yahoo.com
Headteacher: Okurut Emmanuel Tel +2567943303394/+256782330394