You may remember that Concord College love to get involved with charity work and we now have many clubs and societies like the Charity Club, Outreach, The Eco Club, and Amnesty International who raise money to support all sorts of good causes. It is generally the students within this clubs who decide which charities to support. 

The students are often inspired by charity workers coming into the school to tell them about their work which is exactly what happened when Sarah Yates spoke in early 2014 about the Xavier Project, a charity set up to help urban refugees in Uganda gain access to education books.

Later in the year, the founder of a charity to help Congolese refugee children in Uganda to gain access to education followed up with a special visit to Concord. Edmund Page, who founded the Xavier Project in Uganda, was in the UK to say a big ‘thank you’ to students at Concord who raised £6,000 in just over 12 months through the sale of 1,500 text books to incoming Concord students.

Mr. Page, 29, spoke to a group of Concord College sixth form students about the work of the Xavier Project and the impact that the fundraising of the college’s Eco Club has made in Uganda. He wished to inspire and encourage the Concord students to visit and help further with the project when they were 18.

He said the Concord donation was halfway towards the charity’s initial goal of raising £12,000 for the library project in the Ugandan capital Kampala where the charity worked closely with refugee children living on the edge of a slum area, Nsambya where there is no money for education or books.

Concord was introduced to the charity by Mrs. Sarah Yates of Bridgnorth, a volunteer with the Xavier Project.  Mrs. Yates spent early 2015 in Kampala assisting with the setting up of the library. She has to finance her volunteering through donations and is being supported by Concord’s Charity Club and Outreach Society, who are raising money by organising a variety of fundraising events throughout the year.

Mrs. Yates, who visited Concord to receive the £6,000 cheque back in December 2014, said at the time. “There are an increasing number of refugee children living on the edge of a slum area, Nsambya, where there is no money for education or books. Nsambya, one of the poorest places in Kampala, is home to thousands of refugees with many children living in overcrowded houses. In these conditions doing homework is difficult.  We wanted the library to be a place where children can do their homework.”

The children’s library has been located in a building on the edge of the slum area and Mrs Yates is currently out there helping them to get it up and running.  All the Concord College money will buy text books and ordinary reading books.

“The library will not only be for refugees, but will serve as a community resource for anyone in the area.” Said librarian Anne Williams:  “We thought it would be wonderful if we could help set up the library from the proceeds of our own library books sales.  We thought how beneficial for our library to have a link with a facility so rarely found in Kampala."

“Mrs. Yates came in and talked to some of the students who are members of the Charity Club, Eco Club and Outreach Society and they were excited about helping to raise funds to sponsor the library project.”
 
In an email from the capital, Mrs Yates said: “I have been book shopping with the new librarian, Christine. The library will be open in the afternoons and in the morning we will take books into schools to read with the kids.

“This week some of the older kids will help paint the walls and we are having shelves made and a carpet.”
Pictured are Edmund Page (front) with represenatives from Charity Club, Outreach Society and Eco Club.