Abaana Project

The week just past has been bookended by two expressions of community. The first was last Monday when we held a whole-school awards ceremony in the Clarke Hall. Day-to-day, it is impossible to have the whole school in one place, so our assemblies are varied: sectional (junior, middle, senior or a combination), year and house. This works well and allows us to tailor our messages, but an assembly when the whole school can join together has a particular value; all the more so, I guess, because it's special.

Anyway, the whole school was gathered to celebrate the talents and achievements of our boys in sport, music and the CCF. It was an expression of pride in ourselves and, yes, in the School as a whole. It is easy to be jealous of others' success, but so long as a boy has something in his life he knows he's good at, something which allows him to be proud of himself, then he can share comfortably in the applause for others.

It's also a celebration of our staff, whose commitment to the boys goes far beyond anything I could ask or for which the School could adequately pay. At the end of the assembly, I always point this out and ask the boys to acknowledge it , which they do, warmly and at great length. That in itself is a proper celebration of community; not 'them and us' - simply 'us'.

The second expression of our community came in the Sponsored Walk on Friday. This is one of the very few occasions when every member of the School, boys, teachers and support staff, can engage together with a single common purpose. I felt especially strongly this year that it was a common effort because the principal cause for which we were raising money was our ambitious Abaana project. This has been launched by Scott Baxter of Abaana who, over the last fortnight, has spoken about it  to our junior, middle and senior schools. I say it's ambitious; that may be an understatement: the target is a sum of £60,000 and our objective is to build a school, a proper, secure building to replace a wooden structure which is blown down in every storm, without walls, nearly without roof,  near Gulu in Northern Uganda.

Why this project? Why Uganda?

BGS will move into brand new premises in about seventeen months. Most of it is being built with public money, probably, in the end, something around £24 million pounds of it. That's good; a country needs to invest in its future and ensure that its young people are being properly prepared for assuming responsibility and authority in their turn. At the same time, it's a privilege and we should be thankful that even in these straitened times, the money to allow us to move is available and willingly provided. It is for us, therefore, a moral imperative that, somehow, in some way, we demonstrate an awareness of how fortunate and privileged we are by sharing in the joy of a new school. How do we do that? Why, by providing the means for those  without public subvention, without the comforts of western society, without even shoes on their feet and, above all, without access to proper sustained education, to build a school of their own, to build a future bfor themselves in which they have some measure of choice in how they will live their lives.
Why Uganda? Four years ago, we became involved with Abaana and, on the occasion of our sesquicentenary, raised £30,000 to help refurbish the primary school of Christ the King. A group of staff and pupils went out one summer and actually engaged in its construction. Abaana is, by international standards, a small charity, but is is very much a part of our Bangor community and the extent and quality of its work is astonishing.  Its focus is Uganda and since we have already, in a sense, got a stake in this country, it is appropriate that we secure and strengthen it.

I think that, being all together part of this fund raising project, a project of which we hope we shall be a part for many years, developing the link with the area and its people, we are giving thanks for this great blessing of a new school. Joy needs to be shared.