Students from Burgess Hill School for Girls spent two weeks of their summer holiday in Uganda helping to build a much needed extension to a maternity unit.
The team of thirty Senior School students and seven teachers worked as volunteers with the Kabubbu Development Project and The Quicken Trust in Kabubbu, a rural village north of Kampala in Eastern Uganda.
The girls worked to extend the Maternity Unit of the Kabubbu Health Centre which will help to reduce the high mother and infant mortality rates in the village. Presently, Uganda has some of the highest rates for maternal and infant mortality in the world while the UK rates are among the lowest.
The students spent a year fundraising at Burgess Hill School for Girls and managed to raise £18,000 to fund the project, exceeding their goal by more than £3,000. They raised the money through school activities and events, including an Auction of Promises held in March.
Each volunteer also raised their own funds for the trip so that all the money raised at school was given to The Quicken Trust to build the maternity unit extension, with extra funds going towards the equipment needed to run the centre effectively.
The trip was led by Ms Suzanne Triviere, Head of English at Burgess Hill School for Girls, and Miss Carline Petty, Deputy Head of the Sixth Form. Ms Triviere said, “Students benefit hugely from a visit such as this, as they learn about other cultures and the challenges faced by ‘Less Economically Developed Countries’ (LEDCs) across the world. The students loved working in the community, and the opportunity to give to others less fortunate than themselves. It was a valuable trip for everyone.”
Burgess Hill School for Girls has been sponsoring Shellah, a girl living in Kabubbu, for the past 10 years through The Quicken Trust. In 2009 a group of girls travelled to Kabubbu to help build her and her family a brick house to live in.
The Quicken Trust seeks to assist the community of Kabubbu, named “The Forgotten People”, in their search for a way out of poverty, destitution, death and despair. The Trust uses professional research to assess the needs of the orphans and their carers in the village of Kabubbu and seeks to encourage individuals and organisations in the UK and worldwide, to partner them in meeting those needs.
The Quicken Trust built the Kabubbu Parish Health Centre with the help of UNICEF and the British Airways’ ‘Change For Good’ programme. It opened in December 2003 and around 1,500 patients are treated there each month by the five nurses. Before it opened these patients would have to walk 10km to a clinic.
Uganda is recognised as the worldwide epicentre of AIDS with 1,500,000 orphans whose parents have died of AIDS or HIV and in Kabubbu alone there are hundreds of impoverished orphans.