Project

Nyaka Vocational Secondary School

Uganda 217 beneficiaries Kanungu District

Project Complete!

The Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project (NAOP) provides free education to children who have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. Students receive a high-quality education, nutritious meals, uniforms, books, medical care, and school supplies. There are currently 765 students being educated by NAOP from nursery through university. In addition to operating two primary schools and a secondary school, NAOP operates two public libraries, a farm, two medical clinics, and community clean water systems for the community. Support is also highly focused on the 7,301 grandmothers who care for 43,000 HIV/AIDS orphans in the districts of Rukungiri and Kanungu in southwest Uganda. 
NAOP opened Nyaka Vocational Secondary School (NVSS) in 2012. The school currently educates 157 students in grades S.1-S.3 and, in 2018, it will add an additional 60 students in grade S.4. NVSS is a boarding school located in Kambuga Town Council, Kanungu District-Uganda. Since NVSS is a boarding school, a large supply of water is needed year-round for cooking, cleaning, drinking, sanitation and hygiene. The school receives water through a variety of sources, many of which are unreliable or not easily accessible.
NVSS pays a fee to be connected to a gravity-fed water system from the National Water and Sewerage Corporation, but this can be expensive and water is scarce during the dry season. There is a spring outside of NVSS almost 1 kilometer (.6 miles) away which is shared with the community. During the dry season, the spring dries up and can’t provide any water. Water can also be fetched from two streams but they are far away from the school. One is 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away, and known to dry up in the dry season. The other stream has never dried up, but its 8 kilometers (5 miles) away, making for a long walk back and forth from NVSS.
Harvesting rain water is the best option to procure and store water at NVSS. Rain is harvested using water tanks. This is a cost-effective source of water because once the tanks are installed the other costs involved in maintaining them are low. Unfortunately, the girl’s dormitory at NVSS only had one water tank which split and can no longer be used. The girls that live in the dorm now have to go fetch water. Girls can face many challenges and obstacles when they have to leave the school grounds to fetch water, such as: It interferes with their time to study, a risk of accidents from vehicles and motorcycles on the busy roads, dangerous animals and snakes, water-borne illnesses, difficulty with personal sanitation and hygiene, organic matter from the stream staining their uniforms when they do laundry and being vulnerable to attacks and sexual assaults. It’s proposed to purchase two 10,000 liter water tanks for the girl’s dormitory at NVSS. Two tanks will ensure that the 109 female students attending NVSS in 2018 will not have to face the challenges of fetching water that were previously mentioned. The tanks will also provide water to future classes of girls who will live in the dorm in the years to come. Having reliable and permanent sources of water for the girls at NVSS will ensure their health and safety to stay in school and have promising futures.
March 4, 2019

Nyaka School Visit

This is a boarding school that provides free education to kids who have lost parents to HIV/AIDS. 6 of their most senior girls, “the Technovators”, gave us a tour. They...

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August 31, 2018

NVSS Girls Dormitory Water Tanks

Because of your generous support, the girls dormitory at Nyaka Vocational Secondary School now has two new water tanks with capacity to hold 10,000 liters of water. They are both...

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