KUMWENYA School

KUMWENYA Photo Gallery                                               

In February 2015, following a number of years in collaboration with Ruigo Academy in the nearby village of Kasenda, Kelele Africa inaugurated Kumwenya Eco-School in Kimya, a small community in western Uganda.

The school started with 75 children between 3 and 6 years old, three nursery teachers, and three volunteer teachers from Spain, a cook and a janitor.

We feel it´s important for children to begin their learning experience with us as early as nursery school.  This way, they grow together with the school itself, and over the years, progress under the values and method that we have chosen for the center.  This way, they can reach the goal of completing seven full years of elementary school in the environment of stability and continuity that our educational philosophy offers.

Primary School was inaugurated in 2016 with 3 new classrooms while in 2018, the construction of the rest of the school was finally finished, having added 4 more classrooms, a library, an art room, a new teachers’ staffroom and the bathrooms for all Primary.

Kumwenya, which means Smiles in Rutooro, the local dialect, was conceived not only as a school but as a meeting point for the entire community, where children would go to learn and adults could have a common space available to participate in talks, literacy classes, and meetings, while also enjoying the different cultural and educational activities that Kelele Africa offers.

For us it has been, and still is, essential to learn and teach through enjoyment, while understanding school to be an all-encompassing body wherein a varied and healthy diet can be had, learning can happen in a comfortable, happy and amusing classroom, a variety of educationally appropriate material is made available and one can play, exercise, dance and listen to music…do things that would otherwise be impossible unless local professors who have worked, and continue to work on a daily basis toward achieving free and inclusive education, had not been trained first.

Local professors acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to put our educational project into practice thanks to the presence of two Spanish teacher/trainer throughout the school year.

We hope to shape a generation of free and well-educated youth that can be agents of change themselves and actively participate in all aspects of society. We work with values such as respect, tolerance and equality while offering them the knowledge, tools and understanding they need to be pro-active members of society in the future. 

At Kumwneya school, we also educate the children in being responsible for the environment, combining learning with practical experiences, making it expansive to the whole school and getting an active participation in the villages.

In August of 2017 we were awarded the green flag, a distinction given by the international Foundation for Environmental Education “FEE” recognizing our environmental work at school.