Great Lakes Regional College has been accredited as a Tertiary Educational Establishment which means that it will now be able to award its own diplomas.
This will both increase the reputation and attraction of the College, and have a benefial financial impact as it will no longer be necessary to pay money to a the sponsoring university. It is also a significant mile stone on its journey towards attaining university status in its own right.
Thanks to all of you whose efforts over many years have helped the College to achieve this recognition.
Great Lakes Regional College
The vital link between school and employment is the Great Lakes Regional College, a vocational college that produces about 200 graduates a year.
The institution was established with the financial help of the Uganda Christian Development Mission in the USA and the Friends of Kirima Parents Primary School in the UK.
This college, located in a poor rural community in south-western Uganda was in turn established in 2003 after observing that while our initial partner, Kirima Parents Primary School and her sister primary schools were doing a tremendous job educating underprivileged children of ages 3-14, their future remained uncertain if no institution was established to provide vocational education for them to acquire skills for penetrating the highly competitive workplace.
Great Lakes Regional College
The college prepares students for the three main work opportunities in the area, with a focus on enabling graduates to start their own enterprises:
- Education, where trained nursery and primary teachers move on to start nursery and primary schools
- Agriculture, where graduates will identify marketable products and establish producer groups and value addition facilities for successful market penetration
- Tourism, where graduates will form businesses to establish camp sites and offer services as tour providers and guides for the growing tourist population who are visiting Uganda to watch birds, primates and other flora and fauna
Visit February 2010
Update from a recent Trustee visit:
- There has been a huge progress at the College in its move to become a University
- This requires an improvement in library and IT facilities, some building alterations and additional furniture
- The new kitchen and dining hall facilities are excellent
- The new dormitory for 90 girls is undoubtedly the most impressive CHIFCOD building
- The new health centre is still to be completed
- The additional land behind the college has been an excellent purchase and vastly increases the potential of the site
- The Dutch project to provide a woodworking and engineering facility has moved forward with financing secured to ship it out to Uganda and to construct a building to accommodate it
- Hamlet and Kellen are constructing a leisure facility for college students close to the college where soft drinks, snacks, TV, games will be provided
New dormitories opened
New dormitory nears completion
The much-needed dormitory block at the college is nearing completion and we expect it to be ready by Christmas, ready to house the new intake in January 2010.
Building work on the new college dormitory