By Moses Kizito Buule, Buikwe
A ten-man team of Irish evangelists coming together under the ‘Fields Of Life Ireland’ humanitarian organization on Monday began their ten-day round of training teachers and pupils of primary schools in Buikwe district.
In a manner seen as conforming to the adage of training healthy minds in healthy bodies, the team led by Rodney Garnahm of Newtown Breda Baptist Church in Belfast is to hold seminars on child evangelism, protection and development in health and other issues.
On how they realize funds for their assistance, he said they mobilize well wishers from their church who contribute funds for purchasing usables and gifts to the pupils, while each individual meets their own air ticket and upkeep costs.
“We are also holding a similar process in Living Hope School at Lusango in Masaka district, after exhausting our week long stay in Buikwe”, he said.
Seminars sessions to be held at Tom and Margaret Carroll Memorial Primary School Lubumba in Mawotto parish, Nama sub-county, are to attract participants from five other schools in the area.
They have organized a special session entitled ‘I Am A Girl’, geared at sensitizing girls on their life at adolescence, changes in their bodies and anatomical features, and best practices on getting their first menstrual cycles.
Elaborating, the female team leader Jacqueline Garnahm told Watchdog Uganda that transition to adolescence in girls is such a tender period calling for specialized guidance on how to welcome it, and not to behold such changes as a mystery.
“The first step is to ensure that these young girls live in naturally acceptable sanitary conditions, and not to look at themselves as having been turned off the line of activities like play and physical exercises, and to let them realize that they remain children despite the changes”, Garnahm said.
The chairperson of the school management committee for Tom and Margaret Carroll PS Justine Lubanga Nalongo appreciated the contribution by the Irish friends to the school right from its inception, adding that this has greatly changed the working atmosphere.
Our teachers’ and pupils’ morale has been raised on realizing that there is someone out there concerned over their welfare, sanitary standards and feeding habits.
“Fields of Life have constructed for us an ecosan toilet and have helped us set up a section of training our children in agro production and animal husbandry, sectors so crucial in government’s poverty reduction drive”, Lubanga said.
