Rubaga Friends
- a non-profit, tax-exempt charity
See other pages:
www.rubagafriends.org
rubagafriends@gmail.com
The annual budget of the basic support program for the Rubaga Community School and its children is $21,000. At its outset in January 2008, the program was given a five years duration, which does not preclude future extensions.
Improved nutrition is the main item with almost two -thirds of the total support budget. All students have lunch and the boarders get all their meals at the school.
Nutrition – $14,800 per year
The children’s diet has been dominated by starch food items, such as green bananas, egg plants, corn meal, potatoes, yams, and squash. Occasionally, a bean or nut sauce was added to the meal. The support enables a better dietary balance by adding more protein rich food items.
Health care – $1,200 per year
The money helps to pay for necessary medicine and visits to doctor and hospital, and for regular nurse visits to the school. Transportation of sick children to doctor or hospital is very expensive, which is another obstacle for providing sufficient health care to the 280 children.
Education – $5,000 per year for wage increases
Only by solving acute nutrition and health care problems can the children make full use of the education offered by the school. Education is the key to a brighter future giving the children the opportunity to become self-sufficient and productive adults. Teachers are typically paid on the order of 1/2 of wages for teachers in state schools. Even with the 50% raise based on the Rubaga Friends support average wages do not exceed $100 per month. Still, the raise makes it easier to attract and retain good teachers and staff. All employees - teachers and other staff - at the school receive a uniform raise of about $25 per month.
Sister school program
The sister school project between the Rubaga School and the Sam Hughes Elementary School in Tucson is an important part of our program. Exchange of letters, crafts and other materials are popular activities for children, teachers and parents at both schools.
The Kvistgaard Rudolph Steiner School in Denmark has invited the Rubaga School to take part in a pen pal project for the older students. The first letters were sent to Rubaga in the early summer of 2009.
Click here to read about our partnership with SIFE
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The Rubaga Friends Support Budget
US Dollars per year
Improvement of meals
14,800
14,800Improved healthcare 1,200
1,200Increased salaries, teachers and staff 5,000
Basic support program 21,000
21,000
Meals were earlier dominated by starch food items
Roseanne DeCesari with shirt sent to all Rubaga students
Site for a permanent kinderarten structure. Anette Stryhn, vice president of ICWS, in the foreground.
BASIC SUPPORT PROGRAM
Click here to see information
about ICWS
Visit the SIFE website
Visit the ICWS website
Community based activity
Rubaga Friends has a network of generous individual supporters, most of them in the Tucson area.
An important part of our program is the established relationship and exchange of letters, drawings, crafts and more between the Rubaga Community School and the Sam Hughes Elementary School in Tucson, which you can read about by clicking SISTER SCHOOLS in the navigation menu.
Rotary in Tucson has also been very forthcoming. Pima Rotary Club has already organized a textbook project worth $4,000 and a family rodeo event at Old Tucson Studios. The net proceeds will benefit troubled children, the children at the Rubaga School receving a significant share.
Students In Free Enterprise, SIFE, at the University of Arizona in Tucson SIFE is another valuable partner. SIFE teams engage in various outreach activities. In the spring of 2008, SIFE organized a book drive together with the Sam Hughes Elementary School in Tucson and shipped more than 900 books to help the Rubaga Community School establish a library. The shipment included the 5 computers donated to the school by Computer Renaissance, Tucson. In early 2009 a new drive was organized together with the Sam Hughes Elementary School to collect and ship toys to the children in Rubaga.
We also keep close contact with International Child Welfare Service. ICWS is a Danish charity organization. It supports disadvantaged children in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Rwanda and Bulgaria. Its activity is mainly based on sponsorships for individual, needy children. Each donor commits to paying a fixed monthly amount for the sponsored child. The money is transferred to pay for tuition, school materials, lodging etc. for children who have no other provider. ICWS manages 50 individual adopt-a-child sponsorships for children at the Rubaga Community School.
Arrival of library books donated by SIFE
Other support activities
During 2008 and 2009, the basic support was expanded in various ways. Richard Flieger, owner of Renaissance Computer and member of the Rubaga Friends Board donated five computers to the school, giving a significant lift to both office work and computer education.
In January 2009, Rubaga Friends sent an extra $1,000 for fire prevention equipment. This was necessitated by an alarming number of fires at other schools, some of them apparently arson. Very sadly there have been many fatalities of Ugandan school children. The school has hired two security guards to keep watch around the clock.
Through his membership of Pima Rotary Club Dave Flieger, another Board member, initiated a Rotary project, which enabled the Rubaga Community School to acquire textbooks for the four main educational topics, math, English, science and social studies. The Rotary grant amounted to $4,000 of which Rubaga Friends provided about one-third. Together with the small stock of textbooks already at the school the Rotary grant makes it possible for the students in the seven Primary School classes to avail of a full set of textbooks, which significatly improves teaching and learning.
The school badly needs a vehicle for transportation of sick children to the doctor or hospital. There is also a great need of transporting the children to places where they can engage in play and sports, activities that cannot be accommodated at the extremely over-crowded city site of the school. With an owned vehicle the school could pick up its food supplies at much lower prices at markets outside the city. During their latest visit, members of the Rubaga Friends explored the feasibility of purchasing an adequate passenger van. Work is now going on to establish a Rotary International matching grant project for a school van. Again, Pima Rotary Club has taken the initiative to organize the necessary fundraising.
Rubaga Friends recently paid for a new internet modem ($300) and for a replacement computer to the school office ($550).
Teachers and staff, October 2008
Earlier, lack of textbooks kept the blackboard very busy
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Rady to unpack textbooks from Pima Rotary Club
