ROTARIANS in Bewdley and Kinver have helped transform the lives of Ugandan orphans with a £14k fundraising campaign to build a new dormitory.

Forty-eight children have moved into the environmentally-friendly dormitory in Kititi following a five-month building project run by the Planting For Hope Uganda (PfHU) charity led by Kate Oakley from Caunsall.

The building, attached to a school, provides safe accommodation for students who live with an impoverished grandparent or guardian and are forced to walk six miles a day through inhospitable bush.

The project will ensure the girls’ safety as well as enable them to have a full -time education, improve their health by providing safe water and two meals a day. The two to three hours of their time spent walking to and from school is now more profitably used doing homework, catching up with missed education and taking part in sports and spent with friends.

A house mother is also on hand to provide for the girls’ pastoral care needs.

Stourbridge News: School girls outside the dormitory School girls outside the dormitory

The students’ proximity to the adjoining Cornerstone School also enables them to benefit from extra evening tuition from live-in teachers.

PfHU Founder Kate Oakley said: “The girls are loving living in the dormitory. They feel really safe because they don't have the daily trek to and from school through bush and scrubland, along rough tracks. In the rainy season this journey is impossible so they miss several weeks of schooling which they hate.

“It's the first time any of them have slept in a proper bed with a mattress, pillow, sheets and blanket and not had to share a sleeping space on the floor with siblings

“They have more time to relax with friends. Chores are fewer and shared and they do not have to walk several miles to and from school each day. Clean water is at hand and it is safe to drink straight from the water tank. They also have electricity so they can see to do homework.”

Stourbridge News: Kate Oakley with one of the orphans Kate Oakley with one of the orphans

Retired teacher Kate helped establish the PfHU with a young Ugandan graduate Apollo Saku in 2012 while volunteering and fundraising for another bush village in Uganda following the death of her husband.

Since then continued sponsorship has funded the building, equipping and staffing of Cornerstone School – the only school in the region that offers free places to children from destitute families.

The twice-yearly rainy season followed by drought, hunger, unclean water, difficult terrain and lack of shoes, are all causes for poor health and attendance and educational underperformance in rural bush villages in South West Uganda.

Stourbridge News: A school girl on her new dormitory bedA school girl on her new dormitory bed

An uneducated girl child is statistically more likely to become pregnant in teenage years, which leads to increasing poverty for themselves and their families.

Ian Maddock, Chair of Kinver Rotary Club International Committee, said: “As a former headteacher I believe that we owe it to children, wherever in the world they may be, to educate them. It is a path out of poverty, can enhance their self-respect and enables them both to be self-sufficient and to contribute to their society.

“This project will provide this opportunity for countless children over the coming years.”