Micheal Hemus Gives ray of hope to Tasaaga School

A businessman from the United Kingdom, Micheal George Hemus, has joined a growing list of good hearted people willing to lift and empower the People of Sitabaale in Wakiso district through affordable and quality education.

Hemus noted that he holds a three-year plan that will see the school run for another self sustaining 15 years and even more.

“The next three years, we are going to be planning for the future 15-20 years of the school. People are facing slightly different challenges and in order for the school to be able to continue to serve the community, we need to help the school,” he said.

He added that they will gradually help the school with with planning, repairs and some key upgrades.

“We are to repair different buildings, install grills on all the windows so that we don’t get bats flying in as much. We are going to make sure that we are cleaning everything a lot more and just trying to raise all the levels of the building,” Hemus said adding, currently a sick bay and store room are being set up.

He revealed that they plan to bring in a professional accountant to help with the financial management system that would be good for the school.

“With that financial system, we would be able to better run the school and that will also allow us to try and do all the projects in the future,”He said.

How he joined Tasaaga School
He says him and Robin (one of the founders and founders of the school) have been friends for more than thirty years and so he told him a lot about the project, Bruhan a director at the school, sitabaale village, among others.

“He told me about the people we work with and first of all I contributed a few times with donation, my family contributed with some donations but I was always working a lot in the UK and I have always run small businesses like manufacturing and hospitality businesses so I never really had the opportunity to come to Uganda but then beginning of 2018, I had some time and asked Robin if he wanted me to come because Robin is very good with his hands but less good with organization, spreadsheets and strategies so he knew that I could help with those bits that he is missing because I am not very good with my hands but I can do all the other things.”

Adding, “He invited me in 2018, I was really impressed. I was amazed with how many kids i found here, the standard of teaching, how welcoming the local community was and Uganda in general so I spent two weeks here and met Bruhan, saw the classroom and understood the challenges, the big issues and at that time we were having trouble with the regular payment of teacher salaries and one of the things I knew I could do was help with that.”

He noted that in in 2019, they set a UK charity where monthly donations were made to make sure the teachers are paid on time every month.

“We have been doing that and even in covid, we paid them every month to make sure they had income. By doing that, it allowed Bruhan and the team a bit more breathing room so that they could concentrate more on teaching, so that we offered better food, Children today get breakfast now and lunch We have also kept the class sizes reasonable.”

At the moment the school has 260 primary children, 51 are boarders, 35 are OVCs. The school is a non profit and every month, the UK charity donates the teachers salary. The school serves mostly children from the low income earners, and underprivileged.

He said that they have long-term goal where the school is not relying on external donations from other countries.

He revealed that soon after re-organization, the school will look at securing its own grants to further achieve the set goals of providing long-term affordable education.

“We really want the school to be a local private school because that’s our aim so it needs a lot of investment and that’s not going to come from private individuals, that’s going to come fom international organizations and inorder to do that, we need a lot of professionalism in terms of financial management, organization and how we present ourselves. So our plan in the next three years is to implement all those things.”

“The UK charity is investing in an accountant for the school, the buildings, kids facilities, education trips, among others. We believe that during those three years, we will also be developing a plan for the future 15-20 years which will involve a lot of changes in Uganda,” he explained.