Space for Vocational Skills

Providing our rural children with co-curricular skills alongside their broad range of academic teaching is one of the key missions of Uphill Junior School. For the past few years, this has extended beyond the classroom into offering the experience of hands-on vocational skills training.

Summer workshops have covered a range of entrepreneurship skills

In 2024, following a meeting round the dinner table in Uganda, we were delighted to form a partnership with UK charity Workaid. Having heard our stories of the school, and its dreams to provide vocational skills alongside the primary curriculum, Workaid CEO Adrian  Hatch offered to ship sewing machines, a knitting machine and a range of woodworking tools to Uganda in 2025. This was a fantastic opportunity, so we set to collecting as many tools as we could! Check out Tools of the Trade to find out how we got on…

Now we had the promise of equipment, we were able to find a potential site within the school grounds, and started to raise funds for the building of a dedicated vocational learning space.

But first we had to clear away the building occupying the site – the old school kitchen!

By the start of 2025, with the help of Dundee Kiltwalkers, fantastic fundraising by Kilsyth Rotary Club, and a generous grant from the charity Meeting Needs, we were ready to start building.

Kilsyth Rotary Club’s International Quiz fundraiser for the Uphill Vocational Workshop

As usual with the Uphill Build Team, once the project started progress continued apace!

When the trustees visited in September (2025) the building was all but finished, with electricity and water-harvesting already installed.

Clearing the ground, building foundations and raising  the walls

Almost complete! 

The last job is glazing the windows and door panels.

Meanwhile, we wait with bated breath for the Workaid tools consignment to clear Ugandan customs…

2026 will be an exciting year for the Uphill learners!