Kahunda Campus Progress

In order to fulfill JBFC's mission to alleviate extreme rural poverty in East Africa, JBFC's leaders believe it must expand. The goal is to provide more girls with a safe home, more students with a quality education, and more communities with access to healthcare and an economic engine to escape poverty. In order to accomplish this, JBFC realized it needs to build more campuses like our flagship site in Kitongo.

During the spring of 2016, JBFC began inquiring about potential sites in need of JBFC's services. The Mwanza Regional government suggested the district of Buchosa as a potential area for JBFC expansion. This is one of Mwanza region's newest districts, and lacks resources, has very limited services, and has limited NGOs operating in the area. Our second campus in the village of Kahunda, in Buchosa, also lies on the shores of Lake Victoria and is approximately 50 miles from our Kitongo campus, though it is accessed by ferry from Mwanza (it is approximately 2.5-3 hours by car).

After deciding on this location, one of the first things JBFC did was find a Campus Director for this second site. Mr. Seraphine Lyimo, whose Staff Spotlight appeared on last week's blog, was the perfect candidate. Mr. Lyimo, along with Kahunda Campus Manager, Marcus (who moved over from our Kitongo campus), have been busy developing this second campus and preparing it for its groundbreaking.

Mr. Lyimo has developed a positive and cooperative working relationship with both the village and district governments in Kahunda. He has begun the process of obtaining all the necessary building and operating permits that will allow us to begin building later this year.

Marcus, with the help of other recently hired farm staff, has planted 1,660 various trees including: citrus, avocado, banana, plantain, and pomelo, just to name a few! They have also installed a water tank and pump for irrigating these trees. The garden is now operational in one of the alleys and is already producing lots of cabbage and lettuce.

We now have 11 full-time workers in the security and farm departments on this second site.

By the end of the year, we expect to begin construction on a chicken coop and a run for laying chickens and local meat chickens. We also intend to plant an additional 1,000 trees in the remaining tree rows. In regard to construction of buildings, we plan to receive building permits for our first two dormitories, a family bungalow, and a central canteen and will hopefully be able to accept our first girls very soon.

Stay tuned for more updates on this growing campus and thank you to everyone who has made this incredible progress possible!