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Donate towards the construction of a 4,000 orphans' school with modern state of the art facilities.
The MUTO Orphans’ School is an orphan education support model at CIDA Uganda, an educational project developed by The CIDA Orphans’ Support Fund; CIDA Uganda strives to improve access to, and the quality of primary, secondary, vocational & tertiary education in Uganda, with the objective of affecting an increase in attendance, retention and performance of orphaned and vulnerable children, especially for orphans.
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NAME OF PROJECT |
CONSTRUCTION OF MUTO ORPHANS’ SCHOOL |
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|
IMPLEMENTING ORGANIZATION |
CENTER FOR ISLAMIC DEVELOPMENT & ADVOCACY (CIDA) UGANDA |
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|
IMPLEMENTATION PHASES |
|||
|
|
CONSTRUCTION |
OPERATIONALIZATION |
TOTAL |
|
PHASE I |
595,182 |
171,958 |
767,140 |
|
PHASE II |
3,446,732 |
3,628,185 |
7074917 |
|
PHASE III |
884,678 |
3,759,973 |
4644651 |
|
TOTAL |
4,926,592 |
7,560,116 |
12,486,708 |
After close to five years of promoting orphans’ education within and using other school communities, the number of orphans continuing into further education in Uganda remains low. It is widely recognized that an educated girl or boy will marry later, she or he will have less children and his/her children are likely to obtain a better start in life. While this is true, helping a child stay in education and reach their highest academic potential is a big challenge and even greater in the case of orphaned and vulnerable children. After improving the numbers of orphaned children completing pre-primary then primary school and transiting into secondary school through our Alternative Family Based care model, we still had the problem of higher incidences of pregnancies and drop outs among those who then joined day schools. The absence of parental care, the long distances to school, the lack of basic needs, the challenges of adolescence and the lure of malicious men who take advantage of the situation of the orphans’ vulnerability becomes too tough for these children. This caused us to prioritize boarding school for our orphans thus leading us to greater success. It is from this experience that we wish to build the orphans’ boarding school in order to take orphans’ education a notch higher
‘MUTO” If Translated? It means, “YOUNG ONE”. MUTO (young one) Initiative is an Orphan - based program aimed at providing educational assistance to orphaned children, and Other Vulnerable Children (OVC) in Uganda. The management is looking forward to the fund for building a community Orphans’ school. It is our hope that you will be close partners with us as well as we soldier on with this noble cause.
The MUTO Orphans’ School is a model educational project developed by The CIDA Orphans’ Support Fund, which is the department operating under our Organization that is responsible for designing and implementing programs and projects geared towards supporting the orphans.
Uganda has high rates of HIV and AIDS infections and/or deaths and many other fatalities. Since 2020, CIDA Uganda has provided educational, health and sustainable livelihoods support to orphans and their guardian families, as well as funding water and sanitation infrastructure projects in local primary and secondary schools.
CIDA Uganda adopts an empowerment approach encouraging community ownership and independence by promoting and encouraging community action and economic regeneration. CIDA Uganda strives to improve access to, and the quality of primary, secondary, vocational & tertiary education in Uganda, with the objective of affecting an increase in attendance, retention and performance of orphaned and vulnerable children, especially for orphans.
After close to five years of promoting orphans’ education within and using other school communities, the number of orphans continuing into further education in Uganda remains low. It is widely recognized that an educated girl or boy will marry later, she or he will have less children and his/her children are likely to obtain a better start in life. While this is true, helping a child stay in education and reach their highest academic potential is a big challenge and even greater in the case of orphaned and vulnerable children. After improving the numbers of orphaned children completing pre-primary then primary school and transiting into secondary school through our Alternative Family Based care model, we still had the problem of higher incidences of pregnancies and drop outs among those who then joined day schools. The absence of parental care, the long distances to school, the lack of basic needs, the challenges of adolescence and the lure of malicious men who take advantage of the situation of the orphans’ vulnerability becomes too tough for these children. This caused us to prioritize boarding school for our orphans thus leading us to greater success. It is from this experience that we wish to build the orphans’ boarding school in order to take orphans’ education a notch higher.
This time not just for the orphans but for the less privileged children with communities around Uganda.
We will also develop state of the art sports facilities for utilization by the entire region. In the past, we have involved our beneficiaries and their communities in various playing fields from primary schools in the area.
CIDA Uganda has established an independent charitable trust, MOS - trustees, which will oversee the building of “The MUTO Orphans’ School in the area of Luweero District, Central Uganda. The proposed orphans’ school is intended to offer quality education to over 4,000 orphans when fully functional. Classes will be broken down into four streams of 30-35 students running from Pre-primary to primary seven under the Ugandan education system. The land acquired will allow scope for further expansion to over 6,000 orphans.
The overall project costs are projected to be USD 13,658,665. Funding commitments aggregating shall been received from our donors.
Opportunity
A feasibility study, conducted by a consultant engaged by CIDA Uganda was carried out in 2022. The study concluded that the quality of low-cost educational provision in Uganda was poor and that orphans were particularly vulnerable to poor academic attainment and school dropout. During the past four 5 years, CIDA’s Orphans’ program has seen hundreds of the orphaned children we sponsor, drop out of school, both at primary level and at secondary level, due to un timely fees payments, pregnancy, under-performance and early marriages. There are also large numbers of orphans in this country, who have under achieved due to the poor quality of the education that they received. This tusked us to think of another alternative that we can implement to effectively help the orphans.
In the past 5 years, the orphan program has financed the education of over 1,000 orphans at different education levels through other schools and institutions. Today, we boast of over 700 young people who have completed their studies with our help and have entered the job and service market and supporting their siblings and communities, some of them holding very important leadership positions in Uganda and beyond.
The proposed orphans’ boarding school is part of our 5-year development strategy to increase the numbers of orphans who can attain quality pre-primary and primary, as well as contributing towards improving the quality of education provision in Uganda by raising educational expectations and providing a replicable high quality education model in the area which promotes a value system that emphasizes hard work, honesty, integrity and social responsibility.
Governance and Management
Center for Islamic Development & Advocacy (CIDA) Uganda through the MOS – Trustees will be responsible for both the construction phases and for overseeing the management of the orphans’ school.
Dr. Lugemwa Huzair is a BSC, PGDE graduate from Makerere and University of Nairobi. He was a high school teacher for twelve years the last six of which she was a principal of a girl’s school. She then worked for nine years in a Teacher training institution as a tutor and registrar. Huzair then was appointed a District Education Officer where she served until her retirement ten years later. Since her retirement, Huzair has been involved in schools’ management in the capacity of board of management chair and other roles in a total of ten schools. Today she sits on six such boards.
Mr. Egole Michael; has a twenty years’ experience in education and holds an Executive MBA, has eighteen years’ experience in private sector management locally and internationally. He is a human rights activist with a passion for marginalized orphans and women. Kiddu sits on several school boards of management, a founder member of Kayonza Education Initiative and a live member of caucus for Leadership, He is a social entrepreneur and currently runs a project targeting 25000 vulnerable youth in the vocational skilling industry. He is also a communications Specialist.
Dr. Kateeba Hussein is a qualified Medical Doctor and an accountant, with over 15 years’ experience in both accountancy and auditing. He has strong organizational and administrative skills and believes in and endeavors to maintain a value system that appreciates and values all persons with their diversities and abilities. He is committed to integrity in job performance, team work in the delivery of service with sensitivity to environment both human and physical and respect to diversity.
Ms. Utamuliza Diana has an MBA from INSEAD and a Law Degree from LSE. She has been a banker for over thirty years having worked with JP Morgan and Deutsche bank. She was born in Western Uganda and spent her childhood in Kenya. She currently works as a corporate finance advisor. She also serves as a trustee of the Welfare Association a humanitarian aid NGO focused on refugees in West Nile.
Management
Academic management
The Principal is responsible to the trustees for all academic and disciplinary matters relating to the smooth running of the School. She will be jointly responsible, with the Bursar, for the financial accountability and overall management of the school. She is responsible for appointing and managing all academic and administration staff.
The trustees have appointed Andrew Ssewakiryanga, a charismatic, hardworking and gifted head teacher to take on the position as Principal for the school. Andrew is a school principal with eleven years’ experience. He built up St Paul’s School, Saudah Primary school from 500 pupils to the most its current stature with over 4,500 pupils. Andrew is a mathematics teacher by background and has proved to be a strong leader, who wholeheartedly embraces the values of the new school. Many of CIDA Uganda’s sponsored orphans have successfully graduated from Andrew’s school.
Andrew firmly believes that the quality of the teaching staff and the psycho-social support of the students is paramount to the success of every school. She will recruit an experienced team of Heads of Departments, who will be supplemented by determined young teachers.
The teaching staff will consist of:
Mr. Lugemwa will recruit the Heads of Department mainly from her personal knowledge of their teaching qualities. He will recruit young assistant teachers, who will be leaving teacher training colleges with excellent credentials. The community service volunteers will be provided by CIDA Uganda, who insists that all their students must give a year of service to their community before they receive support for their tertiary education.
The teacher pupil ratio will be as 1:15.
The trustees will appoint a bursar, who will be answerable to them for the sound financial management, secure administration of the school and the maintenance of the school buildings and estate. The Bursar will appoint and manage both the finance team and the support staff. The Bursar is responsible for all disciplinary matters relating to his staff.
THE SCHOOL
The MUTO orphans’ School will offer quality education to over 2,000 orphan girls and 2,000 orphan boys when at full capacity, broken down for three terms per year. This will cover pre-primary to primary 7 under the Ugandan school’s education system. The site for the school is at Luweero District. Sufficient water and electricity is readily available on the site and the costs of any additional utilities have been included in the budget.
School structure
The school will be run by observation and adherence to essential principles and values. These principles and values will be communicated clearly to the respective stakeholders. The school MOTTO will be ‘Education for Life’
These include:
Aims, Objectives & Values
OUR AIMS
OUR OBJECTIVES
OUR VALUES:
ALL our students, apart from adhering to all rules and regulations governing the school shall be expected to:
The MUTO orphans’ School gives value to:
The MUTO orphans’ School shall embody integrity, hard work and social responsibility, giving students a powerful platform for influencing change and constructing prosperity in Uganda and beyond.
Strengths and core competences
The main strengths of the school will come from the competent and experienced staff, the supervision and observation of the orphans, the environment and facilities, and the values and social skills imparted to the children. Overall, the school will center itself on achieving academic excellence, whilst also developing the orphans with a set of values and a strict adherence to the principles of the school.
Ensuring the class numbers are limited will enable better one-to-one education and attention to the pupils on an individual basis. This will also allow individual needs to be recognized and addressed. Class sizes are restricted to a maximum of 35.
The design of the school will incorporate current environmentally-friendly technology, including the use of solar energy and bio-gas.
Strategies to mitigate potential risks have been considered and adopted. For instance, the insurance of teacher retention has been addressed through adequate salaries and comfortable accommodation
Service description
The school is intended to provide:
Education curriculum
Please see Appendix 1 for details of the curriculum, which will follow the Ugandan Ministry of Education and sports education system.
Pre-primary children will undertake intensive English courses and program to bring their written and spoken English up to a competent standard, in order to provide a ready foundation to pursue their studies.
All students will enter the Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) public examinations at the conclusion of primary seven.
Boarding system
The school will be a fully-boarding school. The children will live in boarding houses, each house having resident house parents. The house parents will be assisted by one resident house tutor who will be a young unmarried teacher, and a community service volunteers.
Each house will accommodate 45 students occupying 8-9 dormitories, each with a mix of students across the two sections of the school.
Extra-curricular activities
The school will be founded on the principle of developing “the whole person”. We aim to give our students every chance to find and excel in their passions outside of the classroom. We believe that a rounded individual with a passion for a multitude of activities is an individual who will thrive both academically and in their future careers. We will place a large degree of emphasis on the participation of all students in the extra-curricular life of the School, with the focus on building personality traits, which will last long after they have left the school. The extra-curricular activities will combine many elements: Sport, Creative Arts, Pastoral and Liturgical events, recreational clubs, science clubs, and wildlife society.
Income-generating activities
The school will engage in some income generating activities to help towards the operating expenditure. Such activities will include the growing of vegetables, poultry rearing, an onsite bakery, and rearing of animals for the production of biogas. These activities will also involve the orphans in order to encourage practical skills and give them a sense of responsibility. Such involvement will also encourage children to apply themselves to school life in a number of ways, promoting the importance of cost effective activities and valuable life skills.
Operations
The School will not charge all pupils fees for both academic tuition and boarding provision. All pupils sponsored by CIDA Uganda will be required to have their fees paid by the CIDA Orphan’ support Fund before the term begins.
Sponsorship
CIDA Uganda Orphans’ Support Fund has agreed to pay fees for 10% of the pupils at the school. This will grow as a result of the new partnerships with local and International organizations contracting The MUTO orphans’ school. Given the level of child vulnerability in the area, many organizations, religious groups, businesses including banks that have been sponsoring orphans but have often sought schools from outside the area can now rely on MOS. We therefore expect another 30% of the orphans to be sponsored by other organizations already partnering with CIDA Uganda to enroll with our school. We will, as the school is under construction, plan and do an aggressive marketing campaign named “Sponsor a MOS child” targeting Charities, trusts and foundations, businesses, banks, churches, international schools, colleges, wealthy individuals and the middle class in Uganda. Once the school is built (December 2025), we will invite them to the official launching of the school’s ethos and responsibility,
in order to engage them fully in preparation for the January 2026 opening. This targets to bring our externally sponsored numbers to 50%.
Any surplus generated by the school will be used to either invest in the school or will be given to CIDA Uganda towards the sponsorship of more pupils.
A “Safe Space” for orphans and Young Women
The school facility will become the safe space in Uganda for all orphans and young women. It will be utilized during the school holidays for the delivery of sexual and menstrual health programs, leadership training and psychosocial support for orphans in every kind of need. We will develop programs and training manuals and organize schedules for orphans to enroll on. We have done this in the past but on a small scale because of lack of space and an appropriate facility. These programs will also target boys in order to create a balance and build future responsible and respectful husbands for our orphans.
The school will operate a girl’s desk within the school to receive any girls in distress and develop a referral system in dealing with all issues/ cases concerning girls including sexual and physical abuse. This is a service that does not exist and has never existed in the region, but which is absolutely necessary if the gender gaps are to be addressed adequately.
Benefits to the general public
The school facilities including hall, buses, swimming pool, boarding houses and sports grounds, when not in use, will be hired out at a fee or offered on charity basis to the general public for social events like weddings, trainings, meetings and workshops, sports tournaments, youth rallies etc.
Sponsored short courses on cookery, backing, tailoring, sawing and Knitting, business development, hygiene and sanitation, etc. targeting local women and girls will be offered during school holidays and weekends.
The school will purchase its food stuff including maize, beans, vegetables, eggs, milk, etc. from local farmers. Purchases of all other items will also be purchased locally in as far as it makes economic sense. The intention will be to build the local economy, and a sense of ownership, the “Our School” for the local community Priority will be given to the local community in the recruitment of support staff and volunteers, and originating from the local community and being a MOS alumnus will be an added advantage during recruitment of all staff.
PROJECT FINANCING & MGT
The trustees commissioned Mr. Muweesi Ivan of Ummah Consults and Constructions Ltd (an Alumni of CIDA’s Orphan Fund), to design the buildings for a school of 4,000 pupils and appropriate numbers of staff. The trustees have carefully scrutinized the drawings of the proposed buildings and are satisfied that these facilities are appropriate for the needs of the school.
The approved drawings have been subsequently costed by Ssekajugo Jackson(architect), Nsubuga Abdul(structural engineer) and quantity surveyors contracted by Ummah Consults and Constructions Ltd. This costing has been cross checked by Dr. Kateeba Husein and Mr. Kiddu Jamir against the costing undertaken in 2019 by Ms. Noor, a consultant for MOS who had together intended to set up a girl’s boarding school. The Board of Trustees has appointed Mr. Issah Mutumba as the Project Manager. The board will tender for Labour and Issah will oversee the purchases of materials. Peter will be assisted by Jacob Ssenjobe (with a diploma in architecture), Aijuka Erick (with a diploma in structural engineering), and Wycliffe Omino (with a degree in structural engineering), all of who are graduates and beneficiaries of the CIDA Orphan Fund and who are very keen to put something back. We will also use our graduates in building and construction, electrical engineering, masonry and plumbing to undertake the actual construction. The cost of the project management has been included in the Phase 1 budget while the MOS- board will monitor and evaluate the progress on a monthly basis. If they wish, donors may receive regular progress reports on the building phases.
Development phases
The trustees plan to implement the construction of the school buildings in the following phases:
Phase I:
Preliminary planning/budgetary stage. This has involved the registration of The MUTO orphans’ School as a private school. All the architectural plans and budgets have been approved by the trustees of MOS and CIDA Uganda’s Orphan Fund. Phase 1 has also involved the acquisition of 30 hectares of land.
Phase II:
First building phase: we will build the administration block, student boarding facilities blocks No 1, a multipurpose hall and kitchen, secure fencing for the site and part of the sports complex.
This will include the purchase of sufficient furniture, fittings and equipment to ensure that the intake of 2000 students will be accommodated and with the target school opening date of January 2026.
Phase III:
Second building phase: This will involve the completion of dormitory Blocks II, construction of Library, computer laboratory, staff houses, completion of the sports complex and the furnishing of the school for the remaining 2000 students. The school agricultural equipment will be purchased at this stage.
Project Costs and Financing
Costs:
The summary of the project financing of the building project is as follows:
|
|
USD ($) |
|
Phase I: Preliminary planning/budgetary stage. |
767,140 |
|
Phase II: First building phase & operation |
7,782,409 |
|
Sub-total |
8,549,549 |
|
Phase III: Second building phase & operation |
5,109,116 |
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Total Project Cost |
13,658,665 |
Financing
The Trustees of CIDA Uganda fundraising programs
The trustees of MOS- CIDA Uganda fundraising programs have indicated their intention to raise the project fund towards the financing of Phases 1, 2 & 3. The MOS-trustees therefore intend to secure commitments towards Phases I, II and III from the donors. If the funding is secured, the implementation of the project shall commence.
The MOS-trustees.
The MOS-trustees anticipate working with other institutions to provide quality service and logistics such as;
Material partners
The trustees of MOS will approach the local companies for material delivery such as: Steel and tube Rolling Mills, Hima Cement, Tororo Cement, Power and CHINT Lighting Company, Uganda National Roads Authority and the local community to outsource the logistics needed for the project both during construction and functionalization.
The trustees assures the funding partners to fulfill the project expectations as pledged however
The school is intended to hold a mix of pupils in this way under the rationale that it is important for our orphans to integrate with others and to be encouraged to adopt a sense of equality, a 30% of the school pollution shall be enrolled on a school fees payment model to raise more revenue for the school after the 5 years.
The school will engage in some income generating activities to help towards the operating expenditure. Such activities will include the growing of vegetables, poultry rearing, an onsite bakery, and rearing of animals for the production of biogas, dairy farming among others.
Production of school logistical materials such as bio-gas, food growing also shall reduce the school’s main expenditures thereby sustaining the school for much longer.
CIDA Uganda through its “CIDA Orphans’ Support Fund” has agreed to pay fees for 10% of the pupils at the school this will also assure the school of another 10% of the learners’ population which brings in revenue to the school.
The school facilities including our multipurpose hall, buses, swimming pool, boarding houses and sports grounds, when not in use, will be hired out at a fee or offered on charity basis to the general public for social events like weddings, trainings, meetings and workshops, sports tournaments, youth rallies etc. in order to raise more revenues to sustain the school’s budget lines.
