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My Grandparents Built a School in Africa
My grandparents are Paul and Nancy Berrigan and in 2007 they built a Catholic secondary school in the small rural village of Chelekura, Uganda, East Africa. The school was named John Paul Secondary School. A little-known fact is that the school was named in memory of my great-grandfathers, John and Paul. When the school first opened it consisted of a total of nine classrooms. And, there were only 14 students and 10 teachers. Please click on the video below to see the full story: Fast forward to 2024, the school now has close to 700 students and 40 teachers. In addition to the classrooms, now there is the Daryl D.…
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John Paul Secondary School Board of Governors
We are very excited to announce the induction of the new Board of Governors for John Paul Secondary School! We welcome these twelve talented individuals who will actively help guide JPSS to enable its vision: to produce citizens to be the light of the world. Mr. Okuma John Francis, the Chairperson of the Board, holds a Masters Degree in Education Policy Planning and Management, and spent his career teaching and then as Headteacher, finally serving as the Director of Education for the Pallisa district. In fact, many of the individuals on the board have prior teaching experience, as well as school administration experience. Others bring a mix of financial and…
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Volunteers Needed
Volunteer Positions/Skills Needed These represent our ongoing needs for help and include the type of assistance needed and expected time commitment. Website and Social Media management – making changes and updates to existing WordPress website, creating new Posts and basic website maintenance. Website performance optimization greatly needed. Manage social media accounts, prepare posts based on communication calendar, review post performance. Experience with WordPress a plus (but not required), comfort in online systems, social media posting. Time Commitment: website updates quarterly and prior to/after events (3-4 times a year), social media updates 2×3 times a month, more frequent during fundraisers. Graphic Design/Video Production – working in conjunction with Website and Social…
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2024 FOJPS Virtual 5K Results
Thank you so much to everyone who participated in or donated to our fourth annual virtual 5K – benefiting the students and teachers at John Paul Secondary School in Uganda! Please watch the Kick-off video above which includes footage from the race in Chelekura. It was a wonderful day and the students and teachers were all so happy to be part of a fundraiser helping their school. In fact, the teachers came together to take up a collection in order to help raise money for the 5K event. They see the impact the overcrowded classrooms has on their students, and they want to help. The 5K week was a…
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Another School Year Begins…
On February 5, 2024, John Paul Secondary School opened its doors to our students who were eagerly waiting to get back to their studies and to see their friends again after their 2-month end-of-year break. They were warmly greeted by Fr John Chrysostom, Director, Moses Bwayo, Headteacher, and all the teachers. When our students return to school after a long break, it’s much like moving back into a college dorm. They must bring all their clothing and personal items in one trunk plus they bring their own mattresses, linens, and mosquito netting. They are accompanied by their parents or guardians who bring them to school by bus or car and…
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2024 Construction and Groundbreaking
Year 2023 saw the culmination of two essential and large projects, the Multipurpose building supported with a, large modern kitchen, and our big water project. Giddy from the success of these two projects we have even more ambitious plans for 2024 which are well underway. With the school now approaching 700 students with a staff of 50 we need more of everything – beds, classrooms, books, land and the list goes on. Our plan addresses each of these issues. The first priority is increasing the size of the campus, and we have come up with a creative means to acquire a large parcel. Currently there is a primary school with…
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Terrific Test Results!
UCE – Uganda Certificate of Education Taken by all S.4. students across the country Quoting our JPSS Director Fr. John, we are “over the moon” with excitement over our S4 students’ just-released 2023 UCE testing results! They once again ranked #1 in the Pallisa District and, based on their average scores, the school is now in the top 20% in the whole country in UCE results! Many thanks and congratulations to our wonderful teachers and staff for making this happen! The exams that these students take last for several days. Students take 10 subject exams, each of which is typically 2.5 hours. Each exam results in a score for…
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Thrivent’s Impact for JPSS
Hi, I’m Kim Dwyer, Financial Advisor at Thrivent and huge fan of Friends of John Paul Secondary School. One of the many reasons I love my job is that I help families every single day live and leave a legacy in their faith, family, and finances. I work with people just like you to help them organize their finances, align their goals to their values, and create a clear financial strategy. One of the most exciting things that happens within these conversations is when people realize that they can be more generous than they imagined – and they gain confidence knowing the people and causes they care about are taken…
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Local Community Impact
A core part of the Friends of John Paul School mission is that all development efforts for the school include a positive impact for the local Chelekura and broader Pallisa communities. We hope to accomplish this by utilizing local labor workers for construction and campus development, employing locals for non-teaching staff and where qualified, as teachers, assisting with local business development, purchasing locally as much as possible, and by the inclusion of the community in all water access and distribution projects. of the non teaching staff are locals of the food supplies for the entire campus are sourced locally Locals can now easily retrieve their daily water from a 4…
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Campus-wide Water Distribution Project Complete!
We are very excited to announce that the JPSS water project is now complete! Access to clean water has been an ongoing journey since the beginning of John Paul Secondary School in 2007. Initially our students and teachers would walk long distances to reach the community well in order to fill their Jerry cans of water needed for drinking and bathing. After several attempts, we were successful in digging a functioning well on campus in 2015 which made the journey to retrieve much shorter for students and the local community alike. The hand pump served the campus well for a long time, but as the school community continued to grow,…
