Sarah building more than hopes and dreams for Ruhinga
With the current pandemic flooding our news feeds it can be easy to forget that there are many people around the world who lack the basic necessities of life that we take for granted.
But Orange-born Sarah Brown has set her sights on playing her part to improve the lives of disadvantaged school children in rural Rwanda.
Sarah and a team of her fellow civil engineering students from the University of Wollongong are working towards building a new school building for the rural community of Ruhinga, in eastern Rwanda. The team must design and fund the building themselves, with the aim of travelling to Rwanda once travel restrictions are lifted and helping with the construction.
“We are aiming at building the start of a school, one to three classrooms for children under five and over the coming years they will be able to continue to develop it. At the moment, all the children are in a church about a kilometre up the road, so when we build our building the children will move down to it instead of being crammed up in the church,” said Sarah.
“It is up to us to do everything; to come up with what we want the building to look like, we have to do all the design calculations, we have to do all the communication with our stakeholders in Rwanda and we have to do all the logistical work to source and supply materials and the labour and we have to fund the entire project on our own as well.”
Sarah is looking to raise around $6000 to cover the costs of materials and labour for the project.
If you would like to assist you can do so via their GoFundMe page here: bit.ly/RuhingaSchoolProject of there is a collection tin at Greengate Newsagency.
She also taking orders for beanies and hoodies through their Ruhinga School Updates Facebook Page.
Photos are of a similar project by University of Wollongong students in 2018. The building pictured is different in design to the one Sarah’s team is working on but gives a good indication of the materials they will use and the terrain they will be working on.