Thanks to our generous donors, Urukundo has survived with all employees intact and is waiting for the government to give a back-to-work ruling. We will continue using only one gate, washing hands before entering and wearing face masks in public.
Even after the ban on large gatherings is lifted, schools will not open until September 2020.
The Ministry of Education has been trying for some time to change the school year from January to November to September to June. They have decided it would be the opportune time to do this because of losing the school year.
Our kindergarten will be the only class moving up. All other classes will remain as they are. We will not have a graduation ceremony in 2020. The sewing center and Primary 1 through Primary 6 will repeat the 2020 year. It will now be the 2020-21 year. This means our first grade will double in size and our preschool will accept new students if the space is available.
What does this mean to me? Well, we will need more classrooms for Primary 1 and following that, more teachers. We were able to build two classrooms with gifts and donations that came during January and before the virus disrupted our cash flow. It will be necessary to build two more classrooms now because of the government change.
It is pushing us to move ahead of schedule and change our priorities. We had planned to renovate our kitchen from cooking with wood to propane gas in 2021. That would mean gutting the kitchen and bringing in gas cookers. That will have to wait. Wood has become a problem. We know continuing to down trees is part of the problem with mud flooding. Africa needs to allow its jungles to return to improve the environment.