KAMPALA, Uganda – The Building Tomorrow Academy of Gita, about an hour outside of Uganda’s capital city of Kampala, is an amazing example of what can be accomplished when local communities and international organizations work together toward innovative solutions to educational challenges.  

 
While in Uganda last week, I met the dynamic tag team of George Srour, the American founder and “chief dreamer,” and Joseph Kalisa, the Ugandan country director, behind the school in Gita, as well as seven other Building Tomorrow “academies” in Uganda.
 
Building Tomorrow’s mission in Uganda is to do more than just build one-room cookie-cutter school houses. So far they have built eight “academies” – each with seven classrooms and space for up to 325 elementary school students.
 
And the best part is that schools like the one in Gita are built with robust local involvement: the school's surrounding communities help build them and the government promises to pay teacher salaries and ongoing operational costs after construction is complete.
 
The result is a real public- civil society partnership that is showing real results – and clearly making a difference.    

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School project turns into dream
Srour started BT in 2005, the same year he graduated from the College of William & Mary in Virginia.   
 
The inspiration for BT grew out of a visit to Uganda and then a holiday fundraising campaign Srour spearheaded during his senior year at William and Mary called “Christmas in Kampala.” The campaign raised more than $45,000 for the construction of a new school in the capital city. 
 
As Srour told me, he realized in his final months of college that raising money was necessary, but not sufficient to fundamentally change education in Uganda, a country with about 50 percent of the population under 15, according to the CIA World Factbook. He realized they needed to do more.  
 
It is a place in which Srour has no family ties, but a clear calling. 
 
When I asked Kalisa, a Ugandan, if he could imagine doing anything else? He said, “Only when we’re done.” Srour had the same answer.

 

 
Gita school
The school in Gita opened in 2010, the result of BT’s first – though not last – multidisciplinary collaboration with an American university partner. 
 
In the 2007-2008 school year, undergraduate architecture and engineering students at the University of Virginia’s Architecture Studio reCOVER and its Engineering in Context Capstone Design Program designed Gita’s seven classrooms, its library, its latrines, its office space and its outdoor play and learning space (including a sports field and garden). 
 
Other students from the University of Virginia raised money to help the architecture and engineering students’ plans become a reality, including a stationary bike ride ‘across Uganda,’ in which students rode more than 7,500 miles to help raise the necessary $60,000 to build and supply a BT Academy. 
 
Srour and Kalisa clearly still couldn’t believe  –  even years later  – so many people rode so many miles so far away to help kids in Gita, in rural Uganda.
 
Although the design and funding came from the University of Virginia, the local community around Gita built the school.  Through more than 20,000 hours of donated labor, prospective parents and grandparents made the BT Academy in Gita a reality. It was the best-looking, most inviting school we saw on our drive down the dirt road, and yes, still one made of mud and bricks and stone and with outdoor, though hygienic and private, latrines. 
 
The kids were curious, the teachers engaged, the parents proud – and all treated their school space with dignity and respect.
 
Sustainable model
Ultimately, BT academies, including Gita, are public government schools.  Once the building is complete, BT in Uganda, through an agreement with the Ugandan government and with Kalisa’s supervision, selects high quality teachers who will make the most of the open, welcoming environment BT academies offer. 

The Ugandan government then pays for the ongoing operating costs of the schools and the teachers’ and supervisors’ salaries.  This arrangement – versus many other efforts in the U.S. to raise money to build a school somewhere far away with no plans for what happens after the doors open – has a clear plan for sustainable impact: it creates clarity around what is the local community’s responsibility, what is the Ugandan government’s responsibility and what is BT’s responsibility. 
 
That longer-term focus and clarity make BT distinctive – and more likely to have better results for its students, their parents – and their university partners back in the U.S.
 
BT now has eight schools up and running in Uganda, with another six close to completion. More than 25 college and university campuses in the U.S. have contributed funds, designs and time to help more than 1,800 Ugandan kids get a better education – and future. 
 
Next up: teacher academy

One new area of focus for Srour and Kalisa is building teacher capacity – they are clearly concerned there are soon not going to be enough high caliber teachers for the schools they are building already and dreaming about. 
 
Srour and Kalisa’s answer? Build a teacher training academy. 
 
Chelsea Clinton is an NBC News Special Correspondent. She was recently traveling with her father, former President Bill Clinton, to visit Clinton Foundation, Clinton Health Access Initiative and Clinton Global Initiative projects in a number of sub-Saharan African countries, including Uganda. In 2011, Building Tomorrow made a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative to have built at least 60 schools in Uganda over the next 5 years.

 

 

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KABUL – Over 100 girls from Afghanistan’s northern Jawzjan province in Afghanistan were hospitalized Monday after allegedly being poisoned.  The girls, ages 8 to 22, fell ill while attending class at Meser Abad High School, local officials told NBC News.

More than 300 schoolgirls in the province have allegedly experienced poisoning in the last two weeks.

Local officials blamed the Taliban for the schoolgirls’ poisoning, however, the Taliban have rejected the accusation.

Some speculate that the illnesses could be blamed on mass hysteria linked to fears of a Taliban takeover once the U.S. and international forces withdraw from the country in 2014.

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Both the Afghan government and NATO forces have done blood tests on the students after the poisonings, but have found no traces of poison.   

Experts have said that the poisoning scare has all the “earmarks” of mass hysteria. Robert Bartholomew, an expert on mass hysteria, told the AFP that the scare is typical of social panic in other war zones like Kosovo in the past.

 "The tell-tale signs of psychogenic illness in these Afghan outbreaks include the preponderance of schoolgirls; the conspicuous absence of a toxic agent; transient, benign symptoms; rapid onset and recovery; plausible rumors; the presence of a strange odor; and anxiety generated from a wartime backdrop.”  

NBC spoke with Heather Barr, an Afghanistan Researcher for Human Rights Watch, based in Kabul, about the incidents and why the education of girls is such a potent symbol of change since the fall of the Taliban.  

Read a Q & A with Barr below:

Why is girls’ education still the subject of the alleged poisoning attacks?
Schoolgirls, their teachers and their schools are a soft target for insurgent groups seeking to terrorize communities and demonstrate the government's inability to protect communities. The Taliban has issued recent statements talking about their commitment to education, but these statements conspicuously do not mention girls' education – and threats and attacks continue.

Why is poison a main method of disruption?
These [alleged] poisonings are very perplexing, primarily because we have yet to see clear scientific evidence of the presence of poison, in spite of testing by [NATO’s] International Security Assistance Force and international organizations. 

Some experts have suggested that these incidents may have a psychological explanation rather than a chemical one. If that is true, it speaks volumes about the trauma and fear school children experience simply going to school every day, due to threats and attacks against schools.

It would also beg many worrying questions about the arrests that have been made in Takhar and the confessions from some of those arrested. [She was referring to the alleged poisoning of students in Afghanistan’s Northeastern Takhar Province]

Whether or not there is poison involved, these incidents are having a devastating effect on girls' education.

Do these attacks against schools have the desired outcome?  Does it disrupt education for girls? Are families frightened or defiant?
I'm afraid that the attacks do have the desired outcome. Many schoolgirls and their families are defiant in the face of threats and attacks, but at the same time half of all girls are not in school, and security is unquestionably the cause of some of these girls being denied education.

What is the Afghan government doing about the attacks?
The government should make public, and share with international experts, any scientific evidence they have regarding the use of poison in these cases. By doing so can they lay to rest questions about whether poison is really involved and gain assistance in prevent future incidents.

Is this situation likely to continue?
Tragically the poisoning incidents seem to be rapidly gaining momentum at the moment. It is urgent that the government respond effectively and find a way to prevent these incidents. And the first steps have to be understanding what poisons – if any – are involved.

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