MEETING NOTES

Mike Wargo introduced George Srour as our program speaker.  George is founder and Chief Dreamer of an Indianapolis-based Uganda-focused non-profit organization called Building Tomorrow.  While a student at William & Mary, George was an intern in Uganda who realized there was a need for improving education access and quality.  He started raising funds to build a new schoolhouse.  After graduating college, he turned his passion toward tackling a world education problem.  59 million children do not have access to education.  250 million children have been to school (equivalent of third grade) but still can’t read, write, or do basic math.  Building Tomorrow is focused on addressing both issues of access and quality.  Building Tomorrow uses its Fellows, Ugandan college graduates, Lead Teachers, Community Leaders, and the Ugandan government.  Each community volunteers 15,000 hours of labor to build the school.  Each school costs between $65-75,000 to build and serves grades 1-7 with pre-school starting soon.  A key part of each of the Building Tomorrow’s Fellows training is to be dropped off in the target  community, alone, with a cell phone and a place to live, for one month.  This rural Uganda immersion is reported by the Fellows as essential and transformative – a way for them to develop an appreciation for the ingenuity of these rural people – a changed world view.  Hiring Uganda’s college graduates addresses another problem – college graduates often go unemployed for two years on average after they graduate.  By becoming a Building Tomorrow Fellow, they have a two and a half year guarantee of employment.  Sustainability and scale come through having a School Management (like a PTO in the US) and ongoing commitment by the Ugandan government to train and invest in Head Teachers and other teaching resources.  Building Tomorrow’s 20 Fellows have brought 2,236 school dropouts back to school in February and March.  Their goal is to have 51,000 kids in school by 2018.