We're building bathrooms for a low-resource, high-achieving secondary school in Uganda. In working to fill a key need for an already successful secondary school, we are powering the next generation of female Ugandan leaders.

Quality education means more than a classroom, teachers, and textbooks. Quality education requires support of all aspects of a girl's life. She should feel safe and supported, inside and outside, of the classroom. Providing quality education depends on promoting dignity, sustainability, and local solutions driven by local partners.

Seseme Girls' Secondary School is located in Kisoro, Uganda on the border of both Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2017, after a season of heavy rains, the latrines available to the students of Seseme collapsed. Since then, the girls at Seseme have been going to the bathroom on the side of the road. Their safety, their dignity, and their most basic rights have been compromised. Seseme is at a serious risk of losing students because of this situation. Seseme is the only school in the region that provides this quality education at a price that is affordable to the community. However, without funding for bathroom facilities, parents may withdraw their students from the school and girls may find no true alternative in terms of education, let alone quality education. Circle of Women proposes to build toilets that will withstand future storms and enable Seseme to continue to support the education and growth of the girls of Kisoro.

Dignity

Bathrooms are essential to basic hygiene, the right of all, and certainly young women in school, given the start of menstruation and the changes in their lives and bodies. Quality education begins with providing dignified education. Without bathrooms and the privacy that they provide, girls cannot be their full-selves in the classroom. Bathrooms are essential to basic hygiene, the right of all, and certainly young women in school, given the start of menstruation and the changes in their lives and bodies. Educating the whole girl requires protecting these most basic aspects of her life, so that she can experience education with dignity and grow both personally and intellectually. Dignity isn't just a theoretical ideal: some parents are threatening to pull their girls out of this high-achieving school because the current bathroom situation is undignified. Because Seseme provides scholarships, this may mean that those girls receive no education. Help us to make sure that they do not leave school altogether because they cannot be educated in an environment that is safe and dignified.

Sustainability

Seseme is, independent of this investment, a strong school that is well respected within the community. In 2017, Seseme had the highest test scores of all schools in the region. It steps beyond other regional schools in the quality of the education and the reach that it has in the community. By partnering with the Anglican Church and the Ugandan government, Seseme can provide quality education in a safe environment with relatively low prices. It is among the most successful schools is in the region and for that reason has become a first-choice for many low-income families in the region.

Local solutions driven by local partners

Circle of Women works closely with local partners. Seseme is a stellar exemplar of this. The solution we've devised to build bathrooms for Seseme comes after a year and a half of strong relationship-building with principals and teachers at Seseme. This project is a result of their thought leadership, combined with best-in-class research done through Harvard University and UNICEF.

The girls of Kisoro deserve a quality education. Currently, Seseme Girls' School is the best positioned to deliver it. Circle of Women is partnering with Seseme to ensure that the strides made towards increasing girls' access to education do not get reversed. No one should be prevented from attending school because their administration cannot afford basic facilities. No school doing fantastic work towards progress and equality in education should be abandoned because it cannot find financial support for operational necessities. Circle of Women needs your help to ensure that Seseme continues its work of educating the whole girl.