An NGO in Uganda provides schools that lack the bare necessities with "seatpacks” for the pupils. The kit bag contains a fold-up bamboo stool, a little black bord with chalk, a menstrual pouch for girls and a solar panel for extra light.
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00:00An appreciative round of applause, but just for someone sitting on a stool?
00:13The young audience are used to sitting on the bare floor because the school they attend
00:18simply doesn't have the money for chairs and desks.
00:22They complain, even parents complain about that.
00:26They are sick, went to buy furniture, but the problem is money.
00:32We always fail to get money because most of the learners are orphans, and the parents,
00:37those who are not orphans, parents are low earners.
00:40They wash clothes for other people to get money, like that.
00:45Most of them are low earners.
00:48But this morning, Discovery Primary School in the Ugandan capital Kampala is getting
00:53a special delivery, purpose-built seat packs, which each contain a little fold-up stool
00:58with legs made of renewable bamboo.
01:01The cost to the school?
01:03Nothing, thanks to an NGO covering the production costs.
01:08Its founder, Arnold Mugaga, is a qualified architect and social entrepreneur.
01:13The project is financed through both commercial bag sales and international fundraising partnerships.
01:19For every seat pack, perhaps an activity that fundraises for it, and we take these finances
01:29and give the seat packs at no extra charge to the child.
01:34We only require that the child pay one fee, daily attendance.
01:39They must go to school.
01:42The stools have definitely been a pleasant surprise for the pupils.
01:46What interested me that there was bamboo sticks, I thought, ah, what are those bamboo
01:51sticks for?
01:53For beating us?
01:54For what?
01:55But now I saw that it is just for sitting down.
01:58Now I saw that it is very important because some of us, we are even sitting on a floor.
02:04The kids also include individual blackboards complete with chalk for writing or drawing.
02:10And that's not all.
02:13This is a menstrual pouch with a menstrual pad.
02:17It is a reusable pad for a girl child when they are on their periods.
02:23And this is a solar panel.
02:27This solar panel helps a student to use at home when it is dark.
02:33Finally, this is how our bag looks like.
02:38By 2030, Arnold Mugaga plans to have given these seat packs to one million school children
02:43across Africa.
02:45This way they don't have to wait for a tree to be taken down, processed into timber, turned
02:52into a desk, a table or a chair.
02:54They simply have a very mobile bamboo stool that moves around with them wherever they
03:00are.
03:01In a sense, the classroom follows the child.
03:04Where the child is, the classroom is.