"Let the children off the cross"

A dedicated religious nun feeds vulnerable kids at school

 Providing quality education is providing all a kid needs for good development: Food, shelter, clothing, good sanitation, safe and drinking water, security and protection, healthy services, school education, religious formation, care and love is all they need.

Like in all communities, children in Rubanda community are commonly refered to as the beauty of a family or a community while actually they are the most vulnerable, voiceless and worst victims of today's social, political and religious breakdown.

Its a amazing when you closely look at what children go through in Rubanda community and indeed every where on the global map. In Rubanda community, most kids go to bed with empty or half  full stomachs. Early morning they wake up to go to school  with little or no time to wait for a delayed or non existent breakfast because the school is far away.

Kids recreate as they build their muscles at  their new school

With a chronic poverty environment,everyday is a struggle for survival,  each day has its own cross to carry. Where there is no firewood there may be no water, when there is water there may be no food to put in the pot or even no match box to start a fire. All this needs time and the kid hasn't time for the teacher on duty may have no time to listen to the litany of each household each kid carries along.

What's the lesser evil? The kid decides to trek the long distance to the school with empty stomach. He arrives at the school, panting, more hungry, late and punishable. Whichever punishment is given to him does not make sense to him because it does not convince him to be wrong neither does it encourage him to narrate his story. He then silently submits and goes on and on until he can't bear it any more. He drops out of school or even runs away and joins the street community.

A sports teacher carefully develops kids skills 

Look, in the class, he can hardly concentrate, he is hungry. He starts yawning, dozing, skin scratching, head aching, going and out. And during break, normally there are some school games  and other inter school competitions as well of which it may happen that this same kid is good at.
He likes athletics, for example and is good at it because he does run each morning to and from  the school that is kilometers away from home. And regardless of that and his empty stomach, he is always picked number one by the sports teacher to run in the school competition. He really boosts the name of the school and everyone at the school is proud of him.

However, as time for lunch approaches, this tired and empty stomach kid starts imagining what to do next. Go home, what's there? Spend lunch hour at school, how will be my afternoon hot classes? He can't find a better answer than time dictates it.

On certain days, he risks and decides to go home for lunch thinking some food has bee prepared but to find none at home and the little house closed. And for the orphan kids, its much more frustrating because it all depends on how the  extended family relates to the kid. Its a different story and a different cross to mention later.

Other times, this same kid hesitates to go home because he knows that the available little food, prepared in the middle of the day is not even enough for the young brothers and sisters who are not yet the age of school and are at home. So he makes the lesser time wastage choice,to remain at school until the school classes close in the late afternoon.  That's it.

It was amazing that unpublished research by a team of three students from the Roma Tre University, Rome-Italy, conducted in 2005-2006 in Rubanda, revealed that lack of sufficient food in households was the major cause and factor for kids resenting or dropping out of nursery and primary school.

All kids are the same in beauty but life treats differently

Its common to find kids in Rubanda enthusiastic for school but only for a short while or none. Its a common phenomenon that just after this little experience for this kid going to school, one starts noticing strange changes in the kid's behavior. The kid starts resenting school, fabricating stories and lies, creating excuses for absent-ism and complaining of all sorts of things at times even escaping from school.

Lastly, when the kid can't fight or cheat any more and is culturally afraid of saying it all, that he is always hungry, then he creates a kind of self implication mechanism like, "my head is dull, I can't grasp anything in class, I do not want to be the last in class always, I have no books, ...", and so on. Some parents try to help and understand their kids when they start noticing some change in the kid's behaviors but unfortunately a big percentage keep pressure on these kids that eventually does more harm than good into the child's pscho-socio development and in the society as a whole.

Many kids, finding themselves in such an environment, they  start to think and curve ways of escape to find better environments and better understanding people. Others run or want to run away to find freedom and better space from the daily noise at home or with neighbours.With many other reasons, these could be some of the reasons why we are have the community of the street kids is rapidly growing.

Kids faced with all sorts of social- economic-political and religious crisis, they thing out there may be better. They run away from their biological  family and friends to find a new world of friends and homes on the streets. It has been noticed that rehabilitating a street kid requires much energy, simply because this kid has no one he trusts when a deal is made to re-unite him with his family and friends.


Instead these kids turn to things like, drugs, alcohol, hooliganism and  the a like because they sought of to be the ideals of the new world, new friends and new life, unlike the previous noise, stress, enslavement and all staff they have gathered from their homes.They go out on streets to find a family, a society that more a parent, a teacher and a friend to them which unfortunately makes matters worse.

Its from this deep concern that Fr. Dominic Tumusiime wanted to contribute to the well being of children in Rubanda community and initiating a Day and Boarding nursery/primary school program that above all else, will struggles to establish and offer a "school feeding program" which would provides to both kids with a three meals a day,(Breakfast-Lunch and Supper).

Fr. Dominic then initiated a study class in 2004 and in 2005 a school was born as Rubanda Solidarity Nursery/Primaryschool for both girls and boys with current enrollment standing at 260 kids.

With this school, things have become different for Rubanda Kids and the community. Some kids come every morning and join the boarders for breakfast, lunch.Its amazing to hear the testimonies of some of the parents who used to have hardest time with kids refusing to wake up to go to school.  When asked by their parents why they were going very early to school, little kids respond,"We do not what to find breakfast over".

Since our school started we have not registered a kid who has dropped out of our school program because of food or hunger.
 
A healthy child has a true life investment; better growth, better services, less health spending and graceful aging.
And in  jointly creating a good, safer and healthy child development environment we shall have succeeded in enhancing life, human resource, development and peace at both family, community, national and global   communities.

Lets all do all we can in the interest of our kids and our future generations

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