Kisimenyi is the largest of our partner schools and the only school that we have rebuilt in its entirety.

Since the school became our sixth partner school in 2011 we have invested more than £250,000 in building a brand new facility which now serves more than 650 pupils from the surrounding community and further afield. The school has been voted as the most child friendly in the region.

The story so far

We first visited Kisimeny in 2010 at the invitation of the then head teacher, Amon Mwandoe, who we had previously worked with at Jora Primary School. We were shocked and saddened by the dilapidated state in which we found the school; and despite at the time not having plans to extend our work to other schools, Kisimenyi very soon became our sixth partner school. The school was in such a woeful state that there was little option to build an entirely new school and to condemn the old one. This was a significant departure from the nature of our work in other schools, where we had been able to add to and upgrade existing facilities.

A first phase of work was launched in 2011 and the new school opened in September 2013 after two years of tireless work. And not a moment too soon as shortly afterwards part of the roof of the old school caved in during high winds.

Since 2015 we have further expanded and improved the facilities at the school and in all we have now invested almost £300,000 in infrastructure at Kisimenyi including sixteen classrooms, a dedicated three-classroom nursery school, office and staffroom block, library, kitchen and dining hall, teacher housing, toilets and more than 100,000 litres of rainwater storage capacity.