Future Path Classroom is currently getting built in Buhanga, Uganda.
Funds to build the classroom were donated by Meredith Newman Debens of Australia, one of Brighter Brains Institute’s most generous contributors.
The classroom will be the first brick permanent classroom at Mother Givers Humanist School.
Thank you, Meredith!
Dr. Steven David Pell Classroom is quickly being built. It is a brick building for students at Mughete Junior Humanist School.
The building was donated to the school by Aaron Silver-Pell, to commemorate his father.
Thank you, Aaron!
Dr. Bruce Chou Classroom #4 is nearly complete. The brick structure will accommodate students at Vision Care Humanist School in Kyarumba, Uganda.
Dr. Bruce Chou works at a hospital in California’s Central Valley. He generously provided funds previously for three other classrooms - two at BiZoHa Orphanage Humanist School and one at Kahendero Nursery Humanist School. He recently accepted an invitation to join the Brighter Brains Institute’s Board of Directors.
The new classroom will be complete by the beginning on the second term of school.
Thank you, Dr. Bruce Choul!
Vision Care School is receiving a new classroom, made of bricks. This structure is the school’s first “permanent” building.”
Special thanks to Henri and Dianne Pellissier, who paid for the roof and other parts of the structure.
The classroom will be complete in one week, for the start of the second term of school.
by Bwambale Robert
One chalkboard made today at the Bizoha School Kahendero. Days are just running like water yet a lot needs to be accomplished to catch up with school opening date on 6th June this year.
Am likely to open one or two classrooms for learning all in the nursery section. Finishing works are in progress.
Registration of pioneer children at this school is in progress with a lot of expectations on the side of parents and children.
Attached are some of the pictures of the finishing works as they unfold. More about this initiative available online at http://bizoha.org
With Science, we can progress.
Brighter Brains Institute (BBI) is raising funds to build a “Piedmont Classroom” for Mother Givers School in Buhanga, in western Uganda.
The word “Piedmont” indicates “foothills”—specifically it is a noun that means: “a gentle slope leading from the base of mountains to a region of flat land.”
Mother Givers School and Buhunga are in a geographical area that fits this description.
Brighter Brains Institute’s headquarters are Piedmont, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area - it’s a small town with an excellent public school system. BBI is hoping that community’s dedication to education and be extended internationally.
We’re also hoping that all “Piedmont” people everywhere will want to help the “Piedmont” people in Uganda.
Mother Givers is a primary school run by the Buhanga Women’s Collective. The school is in an isolated region of the Ruwenzori mountains - it can only be accessed via a 7 kilometer trail from the market town of Kyarumba. About 20% of the school is orphans - many children in the Ruwenzori are parentless due to AIDS and civil war.
Mother Givers School is presently held in a mud-and-branches “temporary building” that might collapse in a heavy rain. The new “Piedmont Classroom” will be built of bricks, and large enough for 50 students.
The cost to build Piedmont Classroom is only $780, plus additional fees for the school sign ($50), the bank wiring ($45) and photo documentation ($50). The total can be raised if just 24 people donate $40 each. The cost to is very inexpensive due to the low cost of labor.
All donors get their name painted on a contributor’s board in the interior of the classroom, plus a photo from the Ugandan students holding a personalized Thank You card. Additionally, they get a tax deductible receipt, free ebooks, and a t-shirt that says “Piedmont Classroom - Mother Givers School, Uganda”
A sign that says “Piedmont Classroom” will be affixed above the front door of the classroom.
Mother Givers School is secular, reflecting BBI’s goal to establish non-religious schools in SubSaharan Africa. Secular schools will help:
1) promote girls education and female equality
2) promote religious and ethnic tolerance in this region that often has religious and tribal wars
3) promote condom use, in this are where AIDS is epidemic and there’s a population explosion.
4) promote tolerance for gays - Uganda is presently one of the world’s most homophobic nations.
Click HERE to donate $40 to Piedmont Classroom.
Email brighterbrainsinstitute@gmail.com if you have questions.
BiZoHa / Brighter Brains Institute is dedicating the month of June to helping our newest friends in Uganda - the Buhanga Women’s Collective & Mother Givers Humanist School.
This school has adopted the Ten Humanist Principals that we suggested - their adherence to this eliminates religion from the school.
Since then, we have helped them obtain fresh water (thanks to the 3-mile pipeline that Darren Muise sponsored). Plus we got them a rainwater gathering tank (thanks to Reddit R. Atheism)
We built them a new Future Path Classroom (funded by Meredith Newman Debens),
And Davida LeComte is providing lunch money ($2,800) for their next school term (here + here)
What’s Next?
Their two largest concerns are:
1) food for the children at Mother Givers Humanist School, and
2) salaries for the teachers.
Davida LeComte’s idea is to create a business that generates enough income to provide lunches to the children, permanently. Kabugho Victoriana and the other members of the Buhanga Women’s Collective agree.
Their plan, and we support, is to create a “UGANDA LOVE CHICKEN” FARM.
380 chickens will produce enough eggs and meat to:
1) feed the children at Mother Givers School, and
2) sell or trade to buy the other ingredients needed for the healthy lunch: corn meal, beans, tomatoes, onions, plus other vegetables and fruit.
380 chickens! Want to help?
The budget is described HERE
Each chicken, plus the vaccinations, feed, and supplies to care for it, costs $10.
To donate, click:
HERE for 2 chickens
HERE for 5 chickens
HERE for 8 chickens
All donors will receive a tax deductible receipt, two free ebooks, and a personalized Thank You card from Buhanga children.
If you buy 8 chickens, you also get a BiZoHa t-shirt.
What else do our wonderful friends in Buhanga need?
Teacher salaries. At the the present time, they get paid a mere $44 month in salaries. (Faculty can be viewed HERE)
We would love to encourage them by adding bit of cash to their salaries. We especially want to support our new Humanist teacher — Masereka Sebastian.
To contribute to the Mother Givers Teachers Fund, click HERE.
Women who are part of a group fighting for land rights, in Budondo, Uganda, discuss the initiative. (UNDP in Uganda) In 2003, Joyce Nangobi was about to lose her home. In Jinja, Uganda, the land that she lived on was going to be put up for sale to low-wage manufacturing companies, leaving Joyce and the other residents out in the cold.
This essay was first published here.
The women in her town had neither the resources to purchase the land, nor the official titles in their individual names that would allow them to get loans to build on it. Without legal documentation of the land, they lived under constant threat of eviction.
\ “The scenario really affecting us as women is corruption in the process of titling,” Joyce explains. “We have gone through a number of offices, and then when we reached a level where we were applying for deed prints, one of the officers in the surveying department asked for money, for example 100,000 Ugandan shillings (roughly US $37) per person. He promised to bring the deed prints within two weeks, but as I speak now we have not received the deed prints.”
In response to these challenges, Joyce and other women formed the Slum Women’s Initiative for Development (SWID), a collective of local women affected by the lack of land rights.
SWID implements Transparency & Accountability Initiatives, which seek to improve service delivery and local governance processes through grassroots women’s mobilization, and by monitoring and raising awareness of corruption threats in land titling processes.
In 2012, SWID participated in a UNDP and Huairou Commission joint study mapping out specific ways corruption impacts women’s everyday lives, as well as successful women-led anti-corruption strategies. This work mobilized more than 2,300 community members and trained over 500 people on social accountability strategies in countries such as Brazil, Nepal, Nicaragua and the Philippines.
Building on the findings of the study, in 2013 the UNDP global Programme on Anti-corruption and the Huairou Commission started working with SWID, providing seed funding and technical support for the Transparency & Accountability Initiative.
Joyce says local officials were initially suspicious of SWID’s agenda in the land sector. Joyce and the other members of SWID found themselves impeded not only by official corruption, but by a lack of available information about how to claim land titles.
Through meetings with community members to explain the process, women in Jinja organized in groups to visit land offices at the local and district level, and submitted their documentation collectively to avoid paying a bribe. As the benefits of SWID’s organizing became clear, suspicions began to fade away. Land titles were not only a women’s issue, but one that was impacting the entire community.
“Before, the local government thought we were in conflict with them and wanted to take over their process,” Joyce said. “When we did our Local to Local Dialogue, we called the local government into workshops where the community members envisioned what they wanted for their community and shared their ideas with the local authorities. Today, we influence local decisions and they invite us to participate in planning and budget allocation.”
Through this initiative, 35 women have been able to receive land titles in less than 14 months, and 120 other women have submitted the proper documentation to start the titling process. Men in the community have also begun to look to SWID as a resource.
Today because the community understands the process, official surveying of boundaries has increased, while land disputes between the community and local authorities have decreased significantly.
For 2014 and beyond, SWID with the support of the Huairou Commission and UNDP will work to expand the successes achieved in Jinja to other provinces in Uganda.
— Diana Torres & Rachel Wyant
The Second Humanist Principle is: “Respect Life and Property”
Humanists believe people have the right to own their lives, and the right to own property.
We believe killing people is bad, because it “steals” the lives of other people. We believe war and the killing that takes place in war, is ethically wrong. We must never go to war, except to defend ourselves. Humanists are also opposed to executions - killing people who have committed a crime. We also believe prisoners should be treated with kindness.
Humanists believe laws must be fair. If people are accused of a crime, they need to be given a quick trial, so they are not kept in jail a long time. They must be tried quickly. If they are innocent, they need to be released immediately. If they are found guilty, their punishment must be fair. Humanists believe all people are the same. We do not believe governments or religions when they tell us certain people are evil. We need to let each other live.
Humanists believe people should be kind to animals. We understand that animals need to be killed and eaten, but we believe people should treat animals with kindness while they are alive. Animals should be cared for and we should not cause them to suffer.
Humanists believe men and women, boys and girls, have the right to decide what to do with their bodies. We believe no one should force anyone to do something with their body that they don’t want to do. Rape is very very wrong. Humanists also believe boys and girls should receive sex education in school. We encourage teachers, and the medics at our clinics, to properly inform school children about their bodies and sex. Humanists also believe it is up to the woman to decide if she wants to get pregnant or if she does not want to get pregnant.
Humanists believe abortion is a decision that a woman gets to make. If she wants to get an abortion, it is right for her, because it is her body and she gets to decide. She has the right to do that. Humanists believe no government and no religion has the right to tell women how to manage their bodies.
We also believe birth control methods are a woman’s decision. Humanists believe condoms should be used, if either person having sex wants a condom to be used. The Brighter Brains humanists want condoms available in our clinics. We believe condoms and other birth control methods can be used, because we believe people have the right to decide how large their family should be.
Humanists believe people have the right to love and marry whoever that want, as long as both people are adults. We believe people should decide who they want to love and marry, not their parents. We do not think “arranged marriages” are right. They are not fair, they do not give freedom to people. Parents should let their sons and daughters decide who to marry.
Humanists also believe married people have the right to divorce each other. We do not believe government laws and religious laws have the right to tel you who to marry or not marry, or have the right to tell you that you cannot get a divorce. We believe people should be free, to decide who to marry and when to divorce.
We also believe it is a human right to marry someone the same gender as you. People have the right to decide who to love and who to marry, as long as both are adults.
Humanists believe mothers and fathers have a serious responsibility. They must take care of their children. They must keep their children fed, clothed and educated. We believe it is very wrong not to take care of children properly.
Humanists believe property needs to be respected. If you find something valuable that is not yours, you need to find out who it belongs to, and return it. This is because we need to respect the property of others.
Humanists believe owning something, like a farm, means that you need to take care of it, work at it, and seek to improve it. You must use what you have to help your community.
Humanists believe people have the right to not have their property ruined by pollution. If you own farmland, no one upstream has the right to pollute your water. You do not have the right to pollute water either, you must keep it clean for people downstream.
This is the second principle of humanism - To Respect the Life and Property of Others. To let People Decide What to do with their lIves and their Bodies, and to help others also take care of their lives.
Meredith Newman Debens of Australia recently donated $1,000 to Buhanga Women’s Collective, so they could build a new classroom at their Mother Givers Humanist School.
Progress is going quickly - the building was not finished by the beginning of second term (June 6) but it should be complete in two weeks.
Thank you Meredith, for your generosity!
Photos below show the construction of the new classroom, plus there’s a photo of the present branches-and-mud building that is used.
A large box of beautiful Scholastic books has been delivered to students at Mother Givers Humanist School in the small village of Buhanga, in the foothills of western Uganda.
The book delivery was organized by Brighter Brains Institute Secretary Christine de Brabander.
The following email was sent to BBI to express the school’s gratitude:
Dear Chris, Thank for sending us books for children at Mother Givers Humanist School, we received books which are nice for children to read and have interesting pictures and stories, children have started to read them, We say thank you Brighter Brains Institute for making children’s brains with books.
Some photos are attached
Sincerely,
Kabugho Victorina
Chair Person- Buhanga Thulibaghuma Women’s Group
The students at Mother Givers Humanist School are now receiving a free lunch, daily! The food looks delicious and nutritious (see photos below)
The food was provided via a generous donation from Davida LeComte - one of Brighter Brains Institute’s most charitable donors.
She provided the Buhanga Women’s Collective (the governing organization of Mother Givers Humanist School) with sufficient funds to give the 221 students lunch for 72 days (an entire school term).
Thanks, Davida!
Below is a note sent to Davida from the Buhanga Women’s Collective:
Dear Davida
We have started feeding the children at Mother Givers Humanist School, and we have considered buying food in bits. We are buying food enough for a month that means we shall buy food three times a term. Parents are providing greens
Providing lunch to 221 children started on Monday 6th June 2016.Children are feeding on goat meat, chicken, beans, posho/ maize bread and greens. Children will have enough proteins and fats in their bodies and they are ever happy at school.
We bought two pans to use for cooking food for children. I have attached some receipts for food especially maize flour, beans and pans.
We once again thank Davida LeComte for this wonderful contribution.
Sincerely,
Kabugho Victorina
Chair Person- Buhanga Thulibaghuma Women’s Group
by Bwambale Robert
Yesterday i visited the Bizoha Farmland to pick up some foods for the Bizoha School, i got some matooke and fresh cassava tubers plus some cabbages.
We planted corn in part of the Bizoha Farmland and also at the vicinity of the Bizoha School Muhokya. The maize in the fields will be harvested in One&Half month from now and this will give a steady flow of Maize Flour which dominate part of the food menu at the school.
The greens are being planted around the school gardens and in the farmland as well to cater for the vitamins needs as a way to boost the body immunity of our people.
Attached are some of the images of the crops thriving at the two different locations.
With Science, we can progress.
by Bwambale Robert
The Jane Shrimpton Clinic sign has been fixed on the building to house the clinic at the Kahendero school. The clinic will in the meantime be open to the children going to the Kahendero Nursery School which opens on 13th this month due to some delays caused by my carpenters schedules in making the furniture.
The Bizoha Campus - Muhokya and KHPS - Rukoki opened successfully and classes are going on well with children steadily coming in. We are lucky we are getting first timers at both campuses and we expect our enrollment to stretch up a bit.
Registration of Kahendero Children is in motion and will be ongoing in the course of the term. We will be running only the nursery section and so far we have enrolled 15 children, we are looking at a capacity of 50 - 70 children in the whole school and a working staff of 5 people.
Attached are some of the images of jane shrimpton sign.
More about BIZOHA visit http://bizoha.org
With Science, we can progress.
Julia Zelevinksy - daughter of Karen Zelevinsky, a Board member of the Brighter Brains Institute - is sending $300 to sponsor three orphans at Mother Givers Humanist School in Buhanga.
The three orphans are Nzyabake Scovia, Ithungu MacIline, and Kabugho Alice.
Julia raised the funds by selling baked goods at her Unitarian Church.
Thank you Julie!
Dave & Carol Thompson of San Jose, California, have donated $10,000 to the Brighter Brains Institute
They are the parents of BBI Board member Karen Zelevinksy, and the grandparents of recent contributor Julia Zelevinsky.
The funds donated by Dave & Carol Thompson will be used to support projects at the humanist schools that BBI operates in western Uganda.
It is anticipated that approximately 25% of the funds will be delivered to Mother Givers Humanist School, 25% will go to Kahendero Nursery Humanist School, 25% will go to Kayenze Humanist School (a new project) and the remainder will be allocated to Mughete Junior Humanist School, Vision Care Humanist School, and to BBI administrative fees, like wiring and website maintenance.
Thank you, Dave and Carol Thompson!
Dave & Carol Thompson of San Jose have sponsored 10 orphans at Mother Givers Humanist School, in Buhanga.
There are 13 orphans at the school; the remaining three were sponsored by Julia Zelevinsky, the grand-daughter of Dave & Carol.
The children sponsored by Dave & Carol are Biira Fumera, Biira Oliva, Kabugho Eliza, Muhindo Bright, Kuule Kened, Muhindo Zelefa, Mumbere Joel, Muhindo Godwin, Thembo Patrick, and Kabugho Alice.
Photos of all of the orphans can be found HERE:
Dave & Carol Thompson purchased 100 chickens with accompanying supplies, for the Buhanga Women’s Collective that operates Mother Givers Humanist School.
The chickens and supplies cost $1,000 total.
The Chicken Project is en entrepreneurial plan to generate enough income to pay for free school lunches at Mother Givers Humanist School. The plan was “hatched” by BBI contributor Davida LeComte, who donated cash to feed the 221 children at the school for the upcoming term. It is hoped that the Chicken Farm will provide enough food and cash so that BBI subsidy of the lunch program won’t be necessary.
Dave & Carol Thompson’s generosity is deeply appreciated. They recently contributed $10,000 to BBI’s humanist projects.
The note below expresses the gratitude from the recipients:
Hello Brighter Brains
indeed you are pro people/humanists who choose to support the needy people like orphan children and poor communities-long live.
sincerely
Kabugho Victorina
Chair Person Buhanga Thulibaghuma Women’s Group
Dave & Carol Thompson of San Jose has contributed funding to boost the salaries of the seven teachers at Mother Givers Humanist School.
The generous couple contributed (along with another small sponsor) $308 - this delivers an additional $44 per month to each of the seven teachers.
$44 is their current wage per month.
The teachers benefiting from their kindness are:
Kyakimwa Jatrace is the Principal - and she teaches Math and Science to Primary 4
Friday Jockson Kabairwe teaches English and Science, to Primary 2
Bwambale Jockus teaches SST and Science to Primary 3
Kikanga Neckson teaches English and Science to Primary 5
Tsongo Saimon teaches Literary, Math and Art to Primary 6
Twikirze Margret teaches English, Social Development, and health Education to Primary 7
Masereka Sebastian teaches Humanist Values
The Kahendero Nursery Humanist School - due to open its doors on June 13 - has received a donation to construct an administration building.
Dave and Carol Thompson of San Jose donated the funds. The cost was $1,498.
This generosity will enable the director there, Bwambale Robert, to finish the project. At present, there are already three classrooms, a kitchen/dining room, a latrine, and a clinic.
Upon completion, the building will have a sign, with a name selected by the Thompsons.
thank you, Dave & Carol!
