Laura Schreck, left, and Robert Serunjogi struck up a speech connected field successful outpouring 2015. It resulted successful an ongoing fundraising effort that has generated much than $70,000 to physique a schoolhouse for orphans successful Uganda.
A task to conception schoolhouse buildings for orphans successful a Uganda colony – started by a Colorado State University custodian and pupil much than 7 years agone – has not lone survived the pandemic but expanded, and fundraising continues for further improvements.
The collaboration started erstwhile CSU alumnus and custodian Robert Serunjogi struck up a speech with then-undergraduate Laura Schreck successful the Engineering Building during the outpouring of 2015. Serunjogi mentioned that helium was trying to rise wealth to physique a schoolhouse successful his hometown successful Uganda, wherever AIDS and civilian wars had near galore orphaned children, and Schreck offered to assistance him acceptable up a GoFundMe page.
In the years that followed, they raised much than $70,000, backing the operation of respective schoolhouse buildings. And successful 2019, a contingent from CSU that included Schreck, Serunjogi and Little Shop of Physics leaders traveled to the Ugandan village to present materials for hands-on subject experiments and different learning activities. CSU videographer Brian Buss went on arsenic well, gathering footage for an award-winning documentary astir the project, Robert’s Village.
These snippets of video, taken with a phone, seizure scenes from the schoolhouse during Serunjogi’s past sojourn to Luweero, Uganda, successful January 2022. Edited by Ron Bend
Recent improvements
The schoolhouse was shuttered during overmuch of the pandemic, but since 2019, the Little Shop of Physics has raised much than $15,000 of that $70,000 from income of subject toys and equipment, fundraising events and idiosyncratic donations. Serunjogi said that wealth was utilized to excavation a impermanent h2o good astatine the site, truthful that drinking h2o doesn’t person to beryllium hauled from different borehole that’s a half-hour locomotion away.
The backing besides helped screen teacher salaries and the summation of a gutter system. A Little Shop of Physics fundraiser brought successful $600 to bargain cisterns to cod rainwater from those gutters. Serunjogi, who earned his bachelor’s grade successful governmental subject from CSU, said that outstanding needs see a $10,000 imperishable h2o good with a deeper borehole and a star postulation strategy to complaint batteries that could supply powerfulness for lights and different utilities. Convincing the authorities to tally energy to the schools is the semipermanent goal.
Other enhancements that person been made implicit the past 3 years see a caller artifact of classrooms, improved and expanded latrine/urinals, a tiny room gathering with lodging for a caretaker, arsenic good arsenic a veranda and seat for sitting successful the shadiness on 1 building’s wall. As Serunjogi proudly shows photos of the improvements, helium lists different things that the schoolhouse needs, including desks, bunk beds, a perimeter obstruction and airy sockets/wiring.
Donations can beryllium made online.
Construction of a impermanent h2o good astatine the schoolhouse eliminated the request to locomotion a fractional hr to different borehole, but backing is inactive needed for a deeper, imperishable well.
Donations person lasting impact
Little Shop of Physics laminitis Brian Jones, who was portion of the squad that traveled to Uganda successful 2019, said a donation of lone $50 volition educate, provender and location a kid determination for a year.
“I don’t cognize wherever other you tin donate and person your wealth spell further,” helium said, adding that it costs astir $10,000 a twelvemonth to wage the teachers and provender arsenic galore arsenic 200 children.
The Little Shop of Physics has committed to raising astatine slightest $5,000 a twelvemonth by selling subject instrumentality and holding fundraising events. At its adjacent large event, the Spring Science Extravaganza successful April, those who be tin acquisition a drawback container of chill subject gadgets knowing that 100% of the wealth they walk volition spell to enactment the school.
Jones is hoping to instrumentality to Uganda successful 2024, bringing CSU undergraduate students with him.
Buss, whose documentary won “Best Short Documentary Award” astatine the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival past spring, plans to instrumentality to Dubuque, Iowa, with Serunjogi successful April for different screening of the documentary to footwear disconnected adjacent year’s festival.
Buss said that aboriginal plans for the schoolhouse see adding dorms, a cafeteria and a tiny house, wherever Serunjogi tin enactment erstwhile helium visits. Buss has go adjacent friends with Serunjogi, and they often person meal together.
Thanks to fundraising by the CSU team, a seat was constructed on 1 of the building’s walls for sitting successful the shade.
From CSU to aesculapian school
Laura Schreck, who holds undergraduate and master’s degrees from CSU, is present pursuing MBA and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degrees astatine Rockhurst University and Kansas City University, respectively, successful Joplin, Missouri.
She said she chose a programme that emphasizes agrarian medicine due to the fact that it volition payment her successful the aboriginal erstwhile practicing medicine globally. She is seeing photos successful her textbooks of uncommon diseases predominantly recovered successful Africa – including immoderate she witnessed firsthand. Once she earns her aesculapian degree, she sees herself practicing successful Africa a mates of times a twelvemonth due to the fact that of her relationship with Serunjogi and her sojourn to Uganda.
“I cognize I tin person a large interaction with each these years of training,” Schreck said. “It does marque it easier, arsenic you’re staying up precocious astatine nighttime studying, knowing that I’m doing this not conscionable for me, but a batch of different people.”
Scenes from the CSU delegation’s sojourn to the schoolhouse successful 2019. Additional photos and a video tin beryllium viewed astatine a SOURCE package posted that year.
Marshall Fire brings perspective
In precocious 2021, portion location for the holidays successful Louisville, Colorado, she fled from the Dec. 30 Marshall Fire, which wholly destroyed her puerility home. She draws parallels betwixt that acquisition and the orphans she met successful Uganda.
“There are each these kids who are calved successful distant colony huts, without immoderate documentation, and nary 1 knows what it’s like,” Schreck said. “It was conscionable absorbing to benignant of extremity up successful their shoes for a fewer days, wherever everything I owned, my beingness connected this earth, was conscionable wiped successful this fire. You aftermath up the adjacent greeting and it’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t adjacent person a toothbrush, deodorant, glasses.’ There truly is simply a quality successful having a location and conscionable having a spot to live, and immoderate of those kids won’t adjacent get to acquisition what it’s similar to person a spot to telephone home.”
She added: “It’s beauteous sobering. And it’s thing that I anticipation astir radical don’t person to experience. But you know, it does springiness perspective. And successful med school, arsenic I look astatine the textbooks that propulsion from African villages for these uncommon diseases, it’s different fuel. I don’t privation radical to consciousness similar this, to person this uncertainty and nary consciousness of belonging.”