St Helen’s have made an international link with a school located in a refugee camp in Northern Uganda.

The children and staff from the school were originally living in South Sudan, but due to the civil war, fled their country for their safety and now live in a refugee camp.

‘Our Child’ Nursery and Primary School started in 2017 and in December 2017 had 547 pupils in total. This number will keep growing as more children come to live in the refugee camp. There are 14 teachers, 4 for the nursery and 10 for the primary school.

At present, all of the classes meet under trees.

As part of our partnership with the school, we will learn about life at ‘Our Child’, compete against children in our ‘International Olympics’ and raise money to support them with their main needs:

Main needs:

• Pupils have no chairs but sit on the ground (sometimes muddy)
• They have few teaching materials.
• When it rains, teaching must stop
• Some children walk 2 miles to school
• The trees will soon shed their leaves and it will be too hot to sit in the sun
• They need to build shelters before the start of next term – February 2018

In December 2017, St Helen’s raised over £700 towards the building of some simple shelters. Over the 2017-18 academic year, along with another primary school in South Gloucestershire, we are attempting to raise £2000 altogether to complete the shelter building.