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This village had only one primary school - my experience [3]
I would greatly appreciate if the moderators and contributors could help me out here with my essay. It is my first time write an essay
Prompt:.
Describe an experience when you contributed to making a difference in your community
What need did you identify? How did you respond?I was born and grew up in Riangaketh village, Aweil East County in South Sudan where community is in desperate need of education. This village had only one primary school since I was not born up to 2008 which accommodate a total number of 1800 pupils and above. Due to overpopulation in this school, I and three other friends of mine (Gabriel Malong, Malong Mawien and Abuor Gordon Nhial), came up with the decision of forming a community based organization to promote education in the rural areas.
We called a meeting in Riangaketh town to discuss this issue of overpopulation in the school and to pave a way out of how we could address this issue. Luckily, community turned up in a large number to attend the meeting which we set to take place on 13 January 2008. In our meeting we discussed about making contribution to form a community based organization which will deal with the provision of scholastic materials and opening up new primary schools within the area to reduce overpopulation in Riangaketh Primary School. Some elders supported our idea while others were complaining that it might be a scamming trick to take advantage of what community will contribute.
Despite mistrust from some of community members, ex-chief gave our decision go-ahead to walk in all households collecting whatever a person can afford to contribute. With no surprise we were able to collect 100 cows and 250 goats. Though some people were doubtful that we will use these contributions for our personal benefits, they contributed generously towards our proposed project. We were able to raised 65200 Sudanese Pounds equivalent of 13800 US Dollars after selling both cows and goats. We then called a meeting again to alert the community about what we collected. As we told them that we had collected 100 cows and 250 goats which we sold at 65200 Sudanese Pounds, everyone was smiling saying that we have done our part let's see those contributions die in your pockets. We could not mind of all these insults but we need to prove them wrong by implementing the project successfully. We therefore decided to form an organization that would be linked with Catholic Church so that they could help us in times of hardship. As I had learned the Spanish word "Cabra" which means goat in English from Father Diego, a priest from Spain, we therefore named the organization as Cabra Academic Missions because there were so many goats compare to cows.
After forming this community based organization, we opened up two more primary schools within Riangaeth village which we named Our Lady Help of Christian Primary School and Tiitchok Mareng Primary School respectively. However, we did not acquire registration certificate immediately after the formation mainly because we had no enough money to run both the schools as well as registering our organization with the ministry of Legal Affairs of the government of Southern Sudan, so we had to wait until things get better to apply for registration and that would be after South Sudan seceded from the Sudan.
I later on introduced our organization to Deng Chuor, a Sudanese born Australian citizen in 2011 who lives in Australia. Immediately he received my message, Deng did not hesitate to reply saying that he will fund the registration process of our organization to promote education in South Sudan. I was by then studying in Uganda. Deng told me to wait for him in Uganda then we will be travelling to South Sudan together in December 2011. He came exactly in December and we travelled to South Sudan. Within December we applied for registration certificate at the ministry of legal affairs. Our registration certificate was out in March 2012 which made our organization to be legal in South Sudan. Currently Cabra organizes fundraisers in South Sudan and Australia to support the project without obstruction because we are legal organization. Within 2012 we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Salesian Mission in Australia so that our donations would go directly to their oversea funds section. Cabra Academic Missions now supports six primary schools in three counties of Northern Bahr el Ghazal State-Aweil with over 2700 pupils.
In conclusion, helping people gives you hope for everything in life and that was how we struggled to establish Cabra Academic Missions in South Sudan. This is how I have contributed to promote education in my community but I am still eager to do more if God blesses me to get better education.
