Nyapeya School Project Uganda in Partnership with Fields of Life and the Anglican Diocese of Northern Uganda
In 2015 we began to explore the possibility of developing a link with Uganda, which eventually led to us looking to the Christian charity Fields of life (www.fieldsoflife.org) to help us to create a link with a school project and a Church family. In January 2017 this led to a team, made up of the Rector and four parishioners, heading to Uganda on an exploration mission to find a suitable link.
This trip took us to the very north of Uganda and to a small community just 20 miles west of Gulu city at Nyapeya. There was already a school and a church fellowship meeting at Nyapeya, but they met in wooden shelters and a church building which had no windows, no doors, no floor and no roof. When the team came home they were convinced the Lord was calling us to build a school and to finish the Church building project which the Nyapeya community had started. Nyapeya Parish and School fall under the leadership and management of the Anglican Diocese of Northern Uganda.
This led to Drumbeg Parish and friends of the Parish, raising the funds to build a seven teacher Primary School, which was opened in June 2018. The old ‘shack’ school was initially used as Nursery School with three teachers. This was then augmented with a Teacher Accommodation block in 2019. This means that is easier to find and keep good staff for the school.
At this point we have had five teams visit the school since 2017, with a number of Parishioners and friends of the project getting involved alongside us. The teams bring a blend of Fields of Life Programmes and Christian teaching to the school.
In 2020 Drumbeg Parish fundraised to raise enough money to finish the Church, which is now used every Sunday for worship and this was shortly followed by providing a purpose built nursery unit which was completed for our visit in 2022. Since that we have been able to provide equipment for the kitchen so that the children receive a meal every day from the produce of land which was purchased through funds raised here in the Parish.
All this has been augmented by a project through the Parish where we have been able to open a local health clinic staffed by a nurse 6 days a week. Again with the help of the Parish and friends of the Parish this has been made possible and is already a self-funding project.
If you want to get involved in a team or in financially partnering in this project we encourage you to speak to Nigel our Mission Committee chairperson, who will point you in the right direction. We do not use the traditional child sponsorship scheme to financially support the school, but have a ‘whole school’ sponsorship scheme which you can get involved in easily.
Nyapeya has been a success story for which we give thanks to the Lord and pray that this partnership between Drumbeg Parish, the Church of Northern Uganda and Fields of Life will continue to transform lives both here and there!