If you are not familiar with RSS’ partnership with Together in Sport to support children in need, have a read of our previous articles here and here! Here’s our latest update from Together in Sport Rwanda founder, Kari Spence.
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This year’s been a busy and rewarding one for the Together in Sport Rwanda Charity (TISR) team.
We’ve seen our kitchen built at the the Faith and Hope Primary school, which has meant that since March, all 500 pupils now receive a hot school meal every Wednesday. Through our TISR Food Programme, our aim is to increase this so that the whole school gets hot food every school day. Through generous donations from both individuals and businesses (you know who you are) we are able to offer many of the pupils a nutritious start to the day.
Since making a large donation towards the building of the kitchen, Removal Services Scotland (RSS) have kindly offered to donate £500 a month towards our Food Programme. To feed a child costs £3 per month, therefore to feed the school every day costs £1200 a month. The RSS donation means that we can increase the number of days the school will be fed.
However, I have also decided to use some of that money to pay for a school cook. This is because during my last visit, I realised that the head teacher, Felix, and his wife Ester, were getting up every Wednesday at 5am to start cooking the porridge to make sure it was ready for the children to eat when they arrived at 9am. And with the daily responsibilities that Felix already has, we realised this had to change.
Therefore, we have used part of the £500 donation to hire a local lady to come and work in the kitchen every Wednesday. This really is a win-win situation as it means that our new chef, Ernestine, 28, has a job and a wage, and it also means that her 4-year-old daughter has been given a place at the school – giving her access to an education she would not normally have.
When asked what this job meant to her, Ernestine said:
“I am so so happy as when I get to work I am able to have money to buy my family food to eat that night’.
This therefore shows that not only is TISR food programme giving all pupils a hot school meal, which they otherwise may not get, but it is also providing employment for the local community, helping to improve local life.
Next year is already looking extremely exciting for TISR and the Faith and Hope Primary school! We will be starting 2017 by increasing our food programme so that the whole school will be fed two days a week, with the aim of increasing this even more by July 2017.
We have lots of new projects which are to be launched early next year and we are running our first teacher development volunteering trip where 20 teachers will be traveling out to Rwanda to work at Faith and Hope Primary for 2 full weeks. We can’t thank RSS enough for their continued support and we look forward to working with them over the next year!
