Event 1 – 2015 On Saturday 17 October the day dawned clear and cold and ‘Danny the Paralympian’ and three members of The Uphill Trust prepared to head out on the long-awaited 10 km sponsored wheelchair run through the streets of Dundee. It was a most excellent event, and we were encouraged on the way by […]
Finally, we have a playground for Kindergarten! We don’t yet have permanent buildings for the Uphill Kindergarten but, after much deliberation, we decided that a temporary playground made from old car tyres and wooden poles would be the best way forward in the short term as the wooden kindergarten classroom is also temporary and not […]
Clockwise from top left: Uphill Ambassadors Di Hartrup – Mags Black – Debbie Herbert – Joely & Bethan “I feel passionately that EVERYONE has a right to an education”. So says Uphill Ambassador Margaret “Mags” Black, a dental hygienist and the inspiration behind the Gladrags and Handbags Coffee Morning held in Newport-on-Tay on 17 September […]
In 2017 a large amount of school and trustee effort was directed towards liaising with officials from the Ministry of Education and various local government departments, as we worked towards obtaining a private school licence for Uphill Junior School. This is not as easy as it may seem and much of the year has been […]
Meet the Uphill Marathon Runners 2017! The Stirling Scottish Marathon, being held for the very first time in May 2017 and pretty much on the doorstep of The Uphill Trust, was too good a fundraising opportunity to miss. First to sign up was Becca, daughter of one of Liddy’s school friends: She says, ” Hi, […]
Catriona Laird, Scottish illustrator and comic artist, has written and illustrated a lovely book called Patience Goes Uphill. Catriona is Liddy’s daughter and has been involved in raising funds to help Uphill Junior School from the very beginning, through her involvement with 1st Newport Brownies. The book aims to inform children and adults alike on the […]
Another in our series of posts about the children being helped by the Pupil Support Fund: L has four brothers and one sister and they live with their mother and grandmother, approximately 2 kilometres from Iruhuura Trading Centre. He walks to school, and back home home again, each day. His family make a meagre living […]
When the Uphill Trust came into being, Uphill Junior School comprised a wooden building on a rented site in the centre of Iruhuura Trading Centre. It soon became clear that one of the first priorities for the trust would be to find a permanent site for the school, and the hunt for suitable land was […]
Blog post by Liddy Laird I’m sure many of us had an inspirational teacher during our days at school or university. These teachers made lasting impressions on us and were often responsible for setting us off on our future career pathways. My own family is now it its 5th generation of teachers and I am […]
North of Scotland junior tennis players Katie, Katie, Rosie and Niamh, along with their coach Steven Birrell, organised MUDDY MAYHEM – a sponsored assault course event on Saturday 22 October 2016 at Errol Airfield – to raise funds to help provide sports and playground equipment for Uphill Junior School. The children at Uphill need the […]
The reading glasses project began late in 2014, when Elius told us that the elders of his church in Iruhuura were struggling to read their bibles – they just couldn’t see the small text any more. In the west we are very familiar with the 50 + age group reaching for their reading glasses but […]
During the first part of 2016, when the McNabb Classroom Block was under construction, it became clear that a good quality security fence was needed around the school site as a matter of urgency. In the short term, it was essential to keep domestic livestock away from the new building (cow prints in the new […]
Trustee Liddy and her husband Calum undertook the 48 Hour Fence Loupers – sponsored endurance motorcycle event – around Scotland on the weekend of June 25/26 2016 to raise funds to buy a much needed security fence for the new Uphill Junior School site. The route began in Newport-on-Tay at 7am on Saturday 25 June and […]
Whenever we visit Uphill Junior School we spend time observing classes at all levels of the school. Lessons are delivered in english, the current national examination language for the Primary Leaving Certificate which pupils sit at the end of Primary 7, with further explanations in local language if needed. However, due to the lack of […]
Uphill Junior School is located in the village of Iruhuura, in the crater lake hills 35km south of the town of Fort Portal in western Uganda and 5km off the Fort Portal-Kamwenge Road. The remote location is one of the challenges facing both the school and The Uphill Trust. The route to the school from Uganda’s capital city, Kampala, involves […]
The first in our series of posts about some of the children being supported in school by the Pupil Support Fund: We first met M when she was 10 years old in October 2014. Her father had died of HIV AIDS and her mother was sick with the same disease. She and her two siblings […]
How it Began’ – the backstory for The Uphill Trust – was written by Uphill Trust Chairman Max for the Dollar Academy school magazine, Fortunas, in 2014: “Well in that case… “You must come with me into the station where we can deal with this…” Thus was I arrested, in a town in far west […]
