The Young Stars School Project Poverty is not only a condition of reality for many African children, but a cycle that they will perpetuate unless they can develop the skills to contribute in the modern world. Education is the magic bullet. Africa is full of committed teachers and eager students and yet their energies often have no place to go. A school is not only a safe place for learning, but also a psychological presence on the African landscape. It is a landmark whose mere existence proclaims the value of education. It is a beacon of hope.

The Short Version of the Story:

Juliet Funt and Lorne Resnick started the Young Stars School Project on their honeymoon, where they fell in love with two Ugandan schools and the children they served. The project aims to raise $200,000 to build a school for one community and to provide textbooks, uniforms and much needed school supplies to both areas. Your donations will be completely tax deductible. Reliable friends will handle all funds to make sure that no monies are wasted or slip away as can happen so often in Africa. Read on to hear the full story of our experience or,
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The Long Version of the Story:
by Juliet Funt

The Young Stars School Project is directed toward transforming two schools in the Bwindi area of Uganda. One has a building and one does not, borrowing the town church for classes. Both have dirt floors and only a handful of shared and ancient textbooks. Neither has much of anything else…except the most darling, unstoppable smiling faces you have ever seen.

My husband Lorne is a photographer and has been to Africa several times but our honeymoon was my first, and although I could go on and on about the fiery sunsets and the day we saw seventy-two elephants; I will stay on point and tell you about the Young Stars. We met them when we were driving north from the Bwindi Gorilla forest to Queen Elizabeth Park. Our wonderful guide Lawrence knew that we loved kids and like many of his tourist passengers he took us to visit a few schools. But Lawrence knew that schools near the tourist areas get frequent visits and are relatively well taken care of in the way of pencils, essay books and other oft donated items. The stronger need was off the beat and path.

The first school we visited was called the Nyamirama Twimukye Primary School, and the headmaster was Simon. Not knowing how many kids were in the school we showed up with about 80 pens and 80 essay books. It turns out that there were 150 kids and luckily some British tourists traveling with us had about 60 or 70 pencils. We thought we would be able to cover each child with one or the other. (We later returned to find that the younger kids do not use pens and that they had cut the pencils into thirds so that each child could have one.) Click here to donate now.

As we drove in, marked by the Range Rover that screamed Mzungu! (white person,) we were following by a running stream of giggling, rag-clad children. Even as we got out of the car the dancing began. The classrooms were basically bricks built in squares surrounding a dirt floor with either wooden benches or nothing inside. Sometimes the kids sit on benches, sometimes on the dirt. I was quite alarmed as I looked up in the first grade room to see that between the beams there were dozens of wasp nests with black African wasps perched on the sides. Trying to keep my demeanor casual I asked why they were there and was told by Simon that they could not afford to have them removed. I thought perhaps he meant that they would require a professional exterminator or something expensive. Horrified at the idea of these kids getting regularly bitten I offered to give him the money, thinking that it could not be more that $100-$150 US. He thanked me greatly and asked for 2500 shillings…or $3.00. He disappeared during the middle of our visit and later returned with a hand written thank-you letter telling us that our visit was “historic at their school.” We were the first white visitors they had ever had.

School number two, The Kashojwa Nursery and Primary School, was reached on the end of a long bumpy road trip out of the Bwindi Forest, just across the national border from where Diane Fosse did her work with Digit. When Lawrence stopped next to a huge tree with a farmer beneath it I assumed he was scouting for a school. He raised his chin at me as if to say “Here we are.” I looked at him quizzically and asked, ”Are you going to ask the farmer where the school is?" He said, “Look...the school.” I said “What school?” and he repeated,”Look the school.” Finally my eyes adjusted to the sun and I saw behind the tree, a tiny white building that was just starting to leak tiny uniformed darlings from every door. We stayed with them and watched them sing and dance for hours. Our favorite song was “The Young Stars” in which each child would sing a solo describing themselves, beginning with a phrase that matched them like “I am a young boy…””I am a brown girl…””I am a small boy” and then go into verse to be joined in the chorus:

“We are the Young Stars,
We sing all over the Mountain,
We sing sing sing sing,
Sing all over Uganda."

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The first of the two teachers we met was a slim, peaceful man who had started teaching because he could not afford going beyond the Ugandan equivalent of 10th grade. When we asked the head teacher (one of two) she told us that they did not have a building of their own but rather borrowed the town church for classes. There were many down sides to this arrangement. Each week when it was time for church, the children needed to clear out all of their supplies, charts, blackboards etc. to make room for church services and therefore had no feeling of ownership or of space of their own. All four classes needed to divide up one large room. The dirt floors promoted sickness as many of the intestinal worms that African kids get come up through the feet. We decided as we drove away that with the help of all off our wonderful friends that this could change.

Let me also share with you one last story about a fishing village we visited where we gave each child of the village one essay book and one pencil. The books were the type I remember from school for blue book essays; square, blue and about 40 pages of lined paper. My favorite single moment of the trip was when Lorne and I snuck around the corner of a shop after giving out these meager gifts and saw a very cute, very chubby boy all alone with his pencil and book, jumping up and down with glee.

Western resources stretch incredibly far in Africa. Any size donation you can make will create many of these joyous moments. We can make this happen many times over while adding to this short-term joy the long-term indescribable gain of a nurturing educational environment. I hope you will find a way to get involved and MOST IMPORTANTLY to forward this link to as many of your friends as you can manage.

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