We are villagers revitalizing our way of life as farmers and peasants with help from an American tax exempt 501(c)3 charity, and Mum “kaay,” its founder. We are building a 30-acre community school and implementing sustainable ways to improve our local environmental health.  We use our new English literacy to learn helpful, natural steps we can take to eradicate our poverty, improve our water and food resources during climate changes, and stop HIV-AIDS and malaria which are killing us.  Many of you have helped us over the past two years and we are very grateful to you.  “Mwebale innyo! (Thank you!)”

Figs. 1a and 1b – Samson Kawuzi, our Director, and Mum kaay, on our 30 acres where the campus will be built, 2010.

As you browse our story, you will begin to see that we are learning that lack of rain can suggest effective irrigation and organic composting to keep our maize growing year round.  Look at our disastrous maize crop in 2009 due to drought in Figure 2.  This crop failure is due to unpredictable lack of rainfall that will continue to affect our way of life. We are using our English literacy skills to find ways to avoid this crop problem so we can feed our children. We have Reading Clubs to read about environmental health and we now have children keeping “gray water edible gardens” near our homes, thanks to donations of seeds from Montessori schoolchildren in Texas, USA.

Fig. 2 – No Rain, No Maize!

Fig. 3-Peppers in children’s “Gray water Gardens.”

This Project teaches us to educate ourselves to regain the stewardship we lost when global warming began to affect us.  We invite you to see how we can improve our agrarian way of life by working with nature, not trying to make nature submit to gas-powered machines or toxic violence with over-fertilizing.  We are educating ourselves with 21st century agrarian competency.  We also use our new literacy to avoid mistakes the developed world has made that we read about. Think white, plastic bags…   And, our sustainable goal is to pass along what we are learning to other students, villages and global learners as part of our Climate Risk Management Certification Program which is in design now.

One of our eco-partners is the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture - Taliesin.  We are learning about using our locally available building materials, but in new ways to promote construction safety, better allocation of human uses of buildings, and integrating buildings, land, water catchments, solar power, and knowledge about our local environmental floods and droughts. 

 

Fig. 4 – Taliesin Brick Design Modules for Maria Reed Montessori Schoolhouses, to be built in 2010.

Taliesin is donating designs for ALL our campus structures and teaching us to think organically so we can sustain our lifestyle as a “new” eco-agrarian community campus of holistic Montessori programs in parallel with Uganda’s academic education courses, and we’ll offer global technical training certification programs to combat global climate risks. We will build our campus buildings as construction apprentices.  We will staff our schools with certified teachers from our village.  We will create employment opportunities as we offer education and training to others.  But, we need your support to get the campus off the ground.

We invite you to take the journey TO A SUSTAINABLE CAMPUS with us.  We are looking for solar companies, agricultural entrepreneurs, and bio-mass energy technicians to support this “green” effort in Nawantale, Uganda. Contact us to be on the ground floor as Uganda moves into the training and demonstration phases for a “greener” future in sustainable ways. Become partners in the campus array of courses needed across Eastern Africa.