As we get started with the month of August, this week schools are already sending children home, although the official closing date for term II is Friday 12th of August. Girls are busy washing their clothes. This is also the time when schools organise repairs and/or any construction activity to take place during the holidays, because term III will only get started by mid September.
That is why today we visited St. Joseph’s Girls Primary School, that has decided to get rid of their old and inefficient stoves. As we visited the kitchen to take measure of their current saucepans, and make an assessment of their kitchen environment, we once again experienced the despair of school management struggling to purchase the firewood needed to prepare the daily meals.
This is a school with 350 boarding girls, that currently spends 3,500,000 Ugandan Shillings on firewood per term. By the end of this month, we will be delivering their four new institutional improved cook stoves, and cannot wait to collect the information for the firewood expenditure for term III, as we are positive this will not be above the ugx 1,500,000.
