Sacred Heart schools unite for Uganda's future: dream fulfilled to educate African girls

National Catholic Reporter, March 21, 2003 by Patricia Lefevere

They jumped rope for Africa. They sold lemonade at the Rye, N.Y., suburban train station. They donated money at Christmas to build a school for African children instead of using it to buy presents for their friends.

The 650 girls, their parents, alumni, staff and faculty at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, Conn., raised $200,000 so that girls in Uganda could have an education. "We have a sister school in Uganda and we want our sisters in Africa to have a nice school like we do," was how one 7-year-old explained her fundraising efforts, according to Sr. Joan Magnetti, headmistress at the Greenwich school, which is staffed by the Religious of the Sacred Heart.

Last month Sacred Heart sisters in Uganda celebrated in song and dance the opening of Sacred Heart Primary School in Uganda. The boarding school has been the dream of the Sacred Heart sisters in East Africa and around the globe. The order counts 3,500 religious in 45 nations.

Greenwich was part of a network of Sacred Heart schools and their supporters in 14 nations that raised more than $1 million toward the construction of a dormitory-classroom building. The next phase of building will add a kitchen, dining room and convent.

A significant amount of donations came from the alumni, faculty and friends of the 20 schools run by Sacred Heart sisters in the United States. Efforts are underway to expand knowledge of Africa in the curricula of the 20 schools.

On Feb. 10, 70 girls--ages 6 to 11--started their studies in grades 1, 2 and 3 of the new classroom-dormitory building. Another 30 girls will arrive at the school as soon as they can arrange their transportation. The school is located in a rural area seven miles from the city of Masaka, two hours south of Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The area of the Masaka diocese counts a population of 1.5 million that is 60 percent Catholic.

Boarding schools are a rarity in Uganda. Fewer than 10 percent of students--and only those whose families can support them--attend. The school plans to add another grade to the school each year. In Uganda primary school lasts seven years, secondary school follows for four years and the few who go on to university attend two years at a college-preparatory school.

Milestone for Africa

For Sr. Hilda Bamwine, provincial of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the Uganda-Kenya Province, the new school represents a milestone in the long journey to educate women in Africa and for Africa. It is a moment for the sisters, the new enrollees, their families and their worldwide backers to pause and envision what the future might hold for Africa if it could educate all its children, especially its girls, who have traditionally been given few chances for formal learning.

In recent years the United Nations and the Synod of African Bishops have affirmed the benefits of educating girls--improved health, lower mortality rates, a decrease in the spread of HIV/AIDS, contributions to the environment and greater efforts for peace.

"What our sisters have known instinctively is now being documented by UNESCO and UNICEF and validated by Africa's Catholic bishops," said Sacred Heart Sr. Irene Cullen of San Diego. Cullen directs development for the sisters' Uganda-Kenya Province. She spent much of last year with sisters in the two countries, visiting the hospitals, clinics, parishes and the five primary and four high schools where they work.

Since 1961, the society has been in East Africa, where today it has 65 sisters. While 45 of the nuns come from East Africa, the others hail from the British Isles, Spain, Poland, Japan, the United States, Canada and Argentina.

Bamwine entered the Sacred Heart novitiate at 25, with only a rural education. "I am the third generation in my family to be baptized," she said, noting that her grandfather was a convert to Catholicism. The nun, who has three sisters, a brother and eight nieces and nephews, grew up in a village. Like many African girls, she was unable to attend school until she was 13. "I was needed at home to help mother raise the other children, to collect firewood for cooking and do other chores."

Once she started her education in a rural school, she had little time to do homework. Bamwine often found herself taking shelter under a banana tree in the rain, trying to catch up on her studies, she told NCR in New York last year. The provincial was on tour visiting eight Sacred Heart schools across the country.

Bamwine is familiar with American education, having received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Religious Education degrees from Loyola University in New Orleans in the 1990s. Still, she said, tears fell when she visited Duchesne Academy, a Sacred Heart school in Houston, and heard Kate Rainey, a student in the middle school, compare educational opportunities and the work life of American girls with those in Uganda.

While the U.S. literacy rate is around 97 percent, it is just 62 percent overall in Uganda. Most Ugandans who can read are males. Only 50 percent of girls under 15 are literate. "If the boys' education is paid for and there is enough leftover money, the girls can receive an education. Unfortunately, women are still considered inferior to men," Rainey told her classmates.