Kilpatrick School: Inspired by working with awamu

Your school could make a real difference to children in the slums of Kampala.Linda Murray, Teacher at Kilpatrick School, Clyde Bank explains how the whole school has been inspired by working with Awamu below. If you’d like to forge a link between your school and our children please get in touch.

Inspired by awamu

Our Kilpatrick Workshop was inspired by Emma Scullion who started awamu, our pupils wanted to contribute to awamu’s food garden project and help other children.Last year pupils, parents, staff and friends of Kilpatrick school raised over £1,000 which was enough to build 10 raised vegetable gardens in Kampala.

Great Learning Resource that links us to the children we’re helping

It has been wonderful to watch the gardens in progress via awamu’s brilliant blog posts and videos.

These have become a great learning resource in our Enterprise class. It is especially motivating to meet our new friends in Kampala via the videos.We have met John Kakooza, who is a most natural farmer and entrepreneur, and also, Hussein, who we are supporting in starting secondary schools this year. Good Luck from all your friends in Scotland Hussein!

At Kilpatrick School we are growing vegetables in our vegetable gardens through the Food For Thought programme.

We are inspired to try John’s Sack Garden and bottle hanging baskets in the Spring – watch this space!

Through working with awamu we have developed a new product called the awamu-kilpatrick- together bracelet. The bracelet is made from recycled beads made by Sarah Namaganda in Kampala together with ceramic beads made at Kilpatrick School.

We sell the bracelet, together with lots of other products at our school shop on a Friday morning and the Clydebank Museum sells the awamu-kilpatrick-together bracelet.

Awards for Social Enterprise

Working with awamu lead us to win the Social Enterprise in Education award last year. We went to Edinburgh to receive our certificate at a grand ceremony in the Assembly Rooms.

Our pupils did a presentation on Social Enterprise and over 300 people jumped out of their seats to do the awamu dance, including the Guest of Honour, John Swinney, Member of Scottish Parliament.

Social Purpose and inspired learning

Working with awamu has given our school based enterprise a social purpose. Working together to support others has made learning meaningful and rewarding.

We love singing along to the awamu song, which our music teacher composed together with her music classes!