just the facts, ma’am

St. Mary Day and Boarding School was established in 1987. The next year, the name Kevin was added in honor of a Ugandan saint, Sister Kevin, who kept the interests of children foremost in her heart. The word “motherhood” was added to the name, as well, to recognize the fact that the school is about family and raising children, not simply “housing” orphans.

Rosemary, the founder, defied many social barriers when she began integrating orphans into the fabric of the school, but she felt compelled to do so as AIDS began to ravage the country and sometimes wipe out entire families. More than half of the school’s population now is made up of orphans. They call St. Mary’s home, and they call Rosemary mother.

The school raises some of its own money by farming and brick making. The children literally built their school and lodgings with their own hands. Not only does the school benefit from the use of the bricks and the sale of the bricks, this project supports the needs of orphans who endeavor to mainstream into Ugandan society by teaching them a vocational skill.

Children at St. Mary Kevin have come to Uganda from as far away as Burundi, Rwanda, Sudan, Congo, Chad and Niger. They have been abandoned, often abused and mistreated. As I have mentioned before, many of the children come from northern Uganda, where they have lost their families to the “hidden” war that is being waged by the Lords Resistance Army. In fact, 25% of all children over ten years old in northern Uganda have lost one or both parents to the war. Only the AIDS pandemic has created more orphans in the St. Mary Kevin community.

The main goal, as stated by Rosemary, is to provide opportunities to orphaned, disabled and disadvantaged children by accessing primary and vocational education as a way to uplift their standard of living and promote awareness of primary health care.

These are the objectives that have been spelled out in her executive summary:

- provide care, parental love and shelter to the orphaned
- counsel drug addicts, initiate them into the school system and, when possible, reunite them with their families
- acquire and distribute scholastic materials
- make parents, guardians and teachers realize the need to freely talk to their children about STDs, especially the HIV/AIDS epidemic
- assist the children to start simple income generating projects like poultry, piggery and growing of vegetables in order to earn a living
- train the children in vocational skills to make them self-reliant citizens of tomorrow