Sorry.....!

Apologies to those who have been trying to access the blog.

The problem was that Blogger (those folks who run this here blogging site) thought we were a spam blog and not a real blog. Pah! How dare they!

Anyway, as you can see, all sorted now.....thanks to those of you who emailed to let us know!

And soon, we promise, there will be further posts!

We're going to be on the telly....!

In June the Education Centre hosted some lovely folks from SKY NEWS who popped over to Uganda and filmed our project! How exciting...! The fabulous Victoria (producer), Natasha (reporter) and Matt (cameraman) came along and spent a week with us, filming the school children at the Centre, interviewing everyone from school teachers to school kids to parents and grandparents...and they even interviewed some of the Ed Centre staff!

The "package" (as it is called, dontchyaknow) will be screened very soon on a satellite tv near you - the date will be posted as soon as we know - but it will hopefully also be available on YouTube forever thereafter.

And not only that but Matt-the-cameraman is going to use the acres of footage that he shot to make us a fundraising and information DVD to be shown to all and sundry...the date for completion of this longer DVD will be confirmed soon (no comedy extras unfortunately - not even the bit where one member of staff forgot that he had a radio mic on and went to the toilet, much to the horror of the cameraman who still had his headphones in). If you would like a copy to help fundraise for us, please let us know at the usual address (speducationcentre@gmail.com).

For a taster, here's the news crew in action...firstly, scaring the wits out of the District Education Officer who thought we were from a newspaper til we turned up with a HUGE spotlight and a massive camera!

Here they are filming at Lukolo Primary School who very nicely allowed us to follow their pupils around for a couple of days - both at the AEC and at the school. Here's the wonderfully helpful and ever-accommodating Mr Moses being interviewed outside the classroom.

Here we see an Outreach Learning session being filmed inside a classroom at Lukolo Primary.

We can't thank Victoria, Natasha and Matt enough for their interest in our project and we hope that they had a marvellous time whilst with us in Uganda....maybe they'll come back and do a follow up one day?!

Keep your eyes peeled for the date we will appear on Sky News....or contact us if you are desperate to know!

We never said thank you....for the paint job!

Alex-Dot-Com, Peter, Julius, Shariff and Bob-the-girl are wholly responsible for the excellent and funky paint job that the AEC was given...ands it's about time that we got around to saying THANK YOU to them all!

One of the most stressful decisions about the Ed Centre was what colour to paint it! Imagine that we had finally constructed this amazing building only to then ruin it by covering it in a hideous design... after many hours spent staring at the building and failing to come up with a suitable idea we decided to enlist some professional help! Luckily 'Dot Com' was on hand to save the day. He used his artistic eye to create some amazing patterns (based on New York graffiti art) and together with his trusty sidekicks (Peter, Julius and Shariff) turned the Ed Centre from whitewashed drabness into the funky palace we have today!

Here we see Alex a-top some screamingly unsafe African scaffolding whilst he paints the Soft Power logo on the tower...

And here we have Shariff, Julius (with a sun-screen cardboard box hat) and Peter putting the finishing touches to the back of the building...

Then along came Bob-the-girl and her artistic eye (and hands) who managed to paint the Nile onto the side of the building...from source (Uganda) to sea (Egypt). An incredible mural but also an educational and amazing piece of art! We all know that geographically the Nile flows south to north but for the purposes of the Ed Centre Bob turned it on its side and now it flows along the building west-to-east (next time, she asked us to build a 20m high structure instead of a 2om long one). Here she is in action back in March, getting the building ready for the community open day....

And here we have the beginning of the mural where we can see Tanzania (yellow), Uganda(pink) and Kenya (purple). It's not only to-scale but it looks ace!

HUGE thanks to all of them for their hard work, paint-covered clothes, ideas, colour schemes, artistry and miracle working....the place looks great!

Dramarama.....!

On Friday 11th May 2007 the Amagezi Centre Theatre Department held an inaugral Drama & Theatre Show in the Centre.

Robert Matovu (The Ed Centre's 'Theatre Man') and Penny Shoubridge (a long-term volunteer with special interest in theatre) worked incredibly hard over a number of weeks with a large group of budding local actors, actresses, singers, dancers, musicians and dramatists to produce a massively successful (if a little stressful) evening! Here are Robert (in red) and Penny (in green) prior to the event (with Silagi in the back dressed in yellow and a stranger at the front....answers on a postcard if anyone knows this man!).

As this event was really the first theatre event to have taken place for the local community Robert and Penny were unsure of the interest local people would have and if they would even come along.....but as you can see from the photo below, the only problem with attendance was fitting everyone into the theatre!

In fact, it was so packed that people were relegated to watching through the windows!

It is not every theatre in the world that can boast an evening with such variety...we had a Ugandan version of Macbeth mixed in with some hip-hop together with traditional drumming & dancing and much, much more!

It was a superb event and a real success for the Education Centre so big, huge thanks to Robert, Penny, the AEC staff who helped corral the crowd and all the local artists for their hard work and enthusiasm!

Community Open Day...31st March 2007...

...and what a day it was! Over 650 people attended our Community Open Day a few weeks ago (we at the Centre are still recovering from the experience). As you will see from the photos below, we had quite a hectic day of it. There was music, dancing, speeches (many, many, many speeches!), ongoing tours of the Centre, food for everyone, drinks, video shows, drama from a local theatre group, singing from school children....and an enormously long queue of people who wanted to go up the tower!

We had finished painting the Education Centre so it was ready for action (doesn't it look Amagezing!)....

We invited people from the communities of Kyabirwa, Ivunamba, Buwenda and Bujagali - and they turned out en masse and were so excited by the project it really was worth all the effort. I have personally never been hugged by so many old African women in one day! We also learnt a lot from the day as the community told us what kinds of educational programmes would be most beneficial to them...so now we can start looking into how the Centre can meet the needs of the communities around us. But mostly we had a lot of fun...as you will see!

There were plenty of young folks enjoying themselves........and some older folks, too (these women had just travelled up the spiral staircase, they were very chuffed with themselves!)We had some fantastic entertainment from school groups. These are pupils from Kivibuka Primary School...Our cooking crew provided a feast of vegetables, meat and rice for each person in attendance - no small feat when you see the 'kitchen'!The community were extremely excited about the prospect of IT classes and there was a constant gaggle of people in the ICT room answering our questionnaires and signing up for classes! This is the sign for the ICT Dept. - there's no word for 'computer' in the local language here so people say "Kalimagezi", which translates to "The Machine That Knows Everything". But the highlight of the day for everyone was the staircase up to the tower. We ended up having to police this unexpected attraction - letting 20 people up for 5 minutes at a time. This was the queue that stretched as far as the eye could see!
...we didn't have enough time in the day for everyone to go up the stairs but these were some of the lucky ones who made it! Everyone enjoyed the view from the top!But the day had to come to an end! Here we have Venus (Administrator), Herbert (Agriculture) and Robert (Theatre) performing the final task of the day - delivering the hired chairs and tables back to town. They look pretty exhausted, but still smiling!


Our next Community Day is planned for 2012. Should be about enough time for us all to recover!

Happy pupils......phew!

The pupils from Nawangoma Primary School - at the end of our very first day!

Well...we finally opened! Crikey!

Below we see the first 60 primary school pupils arriving for our first day at the Amagezi Education Centre!

These first pupils are from Nawangoma Primary School in the sub-county of Budondo - a school situated in a beautiful but quite inaccessible location at the top of a hill. However, despite the distance they had to travel, all 60 pupils arrived at school very early and were ready to be collected by the Soft Power trucks! Here they are arriving....a very exciting moment for everyone who has been involved in this project!


When they arrive, the pupils enjoy a quick warm up game which is great fun and allows them to relax in their new environment. Many of the head teachers who visited said that their pupils would feel intimidated in such an amazing building - so we do our best to make them feel
at home!


Following the game we split the 60 pupils into 5 groups and they go off to their first learning session of the day. Each session is almost an hour long and at the end we bang a big drum and they rotate to their next session!

Here we see a group enjoying their session in our Theatre/Drama department. This department will be used for highlighting issues that pupils learn about in Social Studies. Here they are watching a DVD about 'Life Choices' which highlights issues surrounding peer pressure and HIV/AIDS. During the DVD the pupils decide which 'choices' the characters make and we follow the progression of the story and then discuss what they have seen afterwards. This method of using audio/visual equipment is something the pupils have never seen before in their desperately under-resourced school. They loved it!


After their first session the pupils rotate to the next department. Here we see a group heading up the spiral staircase to the Agriculture department - at the top of the tower! Here they learn about sustainable agriculture and organic farming. These issues will not only help the pupils pass their exams, but will be extremely useful in their day-to-day life as most of them are from farming families. They are quite brave to even go up the tower - when we had a sensitisation day for head teachers, some of them refused to go up as they were too scared of the height! It really brings home how much simple things make an impact - many of these pupils have never been in a two-storey building!

In our Art department, pupils get to use art equipment in a way they never could at school due to lack of resources. Here the pupils are learning about primary and secondary colours whilst creating a huge picture onto cloth. At the end of term we are stitching all the pieces together from the 22 schools and making a back-drop for the theatre.

After three sessions...it's time for lunch! Schools in the rural communities here in Uganda are unable to provide lunch...so these pupils really enjoyed their lunch hour!

After lunch and a quick energising game, its back to work...here we see pupils enjoying the ICT department. None of the rural schools we work with have any form of ICT equipment (most do not have electricity) but these pupils have heard of 'computers' and are so excited to finally get to use one for themselves. It is wonderful to see how thrilled they are at even typing their names! Once we get the internet at the Education Centre, there'll be not stopping them!

And finally, we see some pupils enjoying their lesson in the Science department. It is difficult to stress how incredible the pupils find this session. They are amazed by the life-size skeleton and by the anatomicl models of human hearts/brains/lungs/eyes etc). But they are most excited about looking through a microscope!

And then all too soon it's time for them to leave! We play one last game and then the pupils go back to school...but they'll be coming again next term for the second of four developmental learning sessions in our departments!

We would like to thank the children of Nawangoma primary School for being such a wonderful first group!

The Head Teachers visit.....!

Each Head Teacher from our 22 partner schools visited the Education Centre on Wednesday 14th February (a very romantic occassion!)

We spent the day chewing over a few issues and showing the teachers our learning sessions and our plans. We also had time for some silly games and a really amazing lunch...so everyone was happy, as you can no doubt tell....

Here we see Amagezi Centre staff and the Head Teachers celebrating a successful day and toasting our future partnership!

HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!

In December 2006 we received some help from two very special ladies from one very special company!

Even though we had employed our staff for the Education Centre we were in a bit of a pickle in early December...how could we carry out an amazing induction and some initial training that would have everyone not only excited about the prospect of working at the Centre but also ready to provide innovative, creative, fun and interesting learning sessions?!

Luckily a forunately-timed email from us landed in the Inbox of "Happy", a training company based in the UK (www.happy.co.uk). We had read about their style of training on the internet and it looked just the ticket - they provide not only learner focused, creative IT training in-house but they also go around and teach other people how to provide such training! We initially asked if they would share some ideas and resources with us...but they went one better than that and sent us two of their workers instead!


In December we welcomed Nicole and Nicky to Uganda and together began planning how they could help us! On December 11th our 10 members of staff arrived for their first day at work and over the next two weeks Nicole and Nicky took us through the most amazing training that showed us exactly how we could turn our lil ole Education Centre into a vibrant, exciting, innovative and learner-focused environment! Everyone learnt so much during this training from Happy - whilst also having loads of fun and doing lots of stupid things like pretending to be witch doctors, playing confusing hand-twisting games and even getting into a bit of a tangle together.....

At the end of the two weeks we had not only discovered what a marvellous, fun-loving and committed bunch we had employed but they had all learnt an incredible amount from Happy and are desperate to get back to work in January and start making things happen in the Centre!

We would not and could not have done anything even remotely as effective as the training that Nicole, Nicky and Happy provided for us. It really made us come together as a team and discover what we want to achieve in the Education Centre.

So...an ENORMOUS thank you to Nicole, Nicky and to their boss, Henry, and all at 'Happy', UK.

And, if anyone can help us persuade them to come back next year and do some follow up work with us we would be overjoyed!

Welcome Amagezi Centre team!

Here they all are....finally! The wonderful Amagezi Education Centre team!

Following a lengthy and difficult national recruitment campaign (during which we received over 300 applications for jobs and held over 50 interviews) we are very pleased to introduce you to our new team!


At the back, from l - r we have.....Dave - Project manager, Ernest - Science department intern, Fred - Handyman and agricultural support, Charles K - Community development intern, Chris - Pottery and art tutor, Silas - ICT intern and tutor cover, Robert - Theatre tutor, Herbert - Agriculture tutor, Venus - Administrator, Amos - Science consultant
At the front, l - r, Nic - Project manager, Charles M - ICT tutor, Hannah - Soft Power founder

This photo was taken on everyone's first day on the job! Since then we have experienced 2 amazing weeks of training and induction during which the team really bonded and took on the vision of the Amagezi Education Centre. We truly believe we have a remarkable team capable of taking this Centre and making a huge success of it; providing primary school pupils, local people and local communities with access to a whole variety of exciting and creative educational opportunites which will enable them to improve their lives both now and in the future.

We can't wait to start working again on 8th January and really see this team develop!

A huge round of applause and a big WELCOME to everyone!

Mr "Dot Com".....

This is Alex, or "Dot Com" as he is known - he is our resident painter/decorator extraordinaire!

He is called "Dot Com" by most of the people in the sub-county because he paints all of the 'www.softpowereducation.com' signs that we have around the place on billboards, buildings and vehicles.

Alex and his team of painters and decorators are currently working morning, noon and night (including New Years Day - by choice!) to get our building ready as quickly as possible. Hopefully in early January so we can start some work!

Check out the first completed room (except for the floor, which will be the last thing to be painted throughout).

This is our ICT Suite and it looks GREAT! The bespoke desk for the computers is being fitted next week (w/c 8th Jan!). Then we can haul our computers up from their hiding place in town and get them set up!

Check out the blog in the future for more photos of the painting progress!

Pathways....

Here we see the guys starting on the pathways around the site a few weeks ago...


...and we now have almost-completed pathways leading from the car park to every aspect of the site...so no more trudging through red, wet, ankle deep mud to get into the building! As you can see from the photo, they're not quite finished (gravel/murram needs to be laid inside them) but they have made a huge difference to the site already and once we get some flowers planted and some grass grown, it's going to look great!

Thank you to the International Women of Kampala....

The International Women's Organisation (IWO) in Kampala generously agreed to fund the equipment we needed for our Science Laboratory.

Just before Christmas I went to meet with Susan Brownings, treasurer of the IWO, at a school supplies shop in Kampala where I collected everything we needed...and the IWO took care of the bill!

I left with 3 microscopes, 2 bunsen burners, measuring cylinders, anatomical models of human brains/digestive systems/ears/eyes/hearts, a rain gauge, weather vane, hydrometer, thermometers...and a life size human skeleton!


As you can see, Susan and I got along famously with the skeleton! We have decided that the very first group of school pupils who use the Science Lab are going to be charged with the task of naming him/her! We'll keep you posted on the chosen name....

We can't thank the IWO enough for their generosity and we hope to see some of the International Women at the Centre sometime in 2007 so they can see their equipment in action!

Work, work, work.....

Is it any wonder the building has taken so long with the builders doing this every day?!

Well, to be honest - they deserve the rest! We have worked them very hard over the last few months and its thanks to them that we have such a superb structure. These are the last remaining builders from a large group of guys who have worked on the building since last year. Look out for photos of them when we throw the enormous 'end of building' party early in 2007 - apparently to truly celebrate this momentous occasion we have to slaughter one chicken for every man who has worked on the job.

Watch out the poultry of Uganda, your days are numbered!