The family of a young County Armagh woman who made it her mission to build a school in Uganda shortly before she passed away in 2010 are continuing to fundraise in a bid to maximise her dream.
Charlene Barr was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and confined to bed. In need of a double lung transplant and unable to attend school herself, the brave Lurgan teenager decided she wanted to improve opportunities for the children of Uganda, where the family had visited two years prior to her untimely passing.
So was born Charlene’s Project.
But more than just building one school, the family have continued to pursue her goal, adding more, with work now ongoing to construct further vocational blocks at Charlene Secondary School, a lasting legacy to an inspirational young woman loved and missed by all.
On Sunday, Charlene’s brother, David, a teacher at Glenola Collegiate in Bangor, will take on the Belfast Half Marathon to raise money to help complete and equip those vocational classrooms.
The intention is that Charlene’s Project would come to an end next summer, with the family thanking everyone for their support over the years and appealing for people to help them with “one final push” as they aim to “finish well”.
Charlene had been adopted by Dickie and Janice Barr after she had spent the first year of her life seriously ill in hospital.
For Dickie, he had been back and forward to Uganda from around 2005 and had always wanted to bring his family there.
And that he did, for three years later, Dickie and Janice, along with son David, and daughters Rebecca, Natalie, twins Bethany and Serena, and Charlene, all travelled out.
That visit, although they did not know it then, was to inspire Charlene’s Project, which is still ongoing today.
Charlene and her family in Uganda in 2008.
Dickie told Armagh I: “Charlene was part of our family and she was with us when we were out in 2008. She was about 18 years old at that stage. The following year, she basically was told that her lungs had got so bad she was going to have to drop out of school and go on the lung transplant list.
Charlene writing in her fundraising blog.
“The very day that she dropped out of school, we picked her up at hospital and went down to Nando’s in Victoria Square in Belfast. Everybody was basically coming to terms with it. Charlene had her head on the table and she just lifted her head and said, ‘I know what I’m going to do. Do you remember the kids in Uganda we saw who couldn’t get to school? I’m going to raise money to build a school in Uganda’.
“And that was really the start of the project. She raised, energetically, and there was certainly a lot of local support; the media got behind her and she did build a primary school. She didn’t see it. She passed away in October 2010, so it would be 16 years this October, but the project kept on in her memory, set up as a charity.
Charlene in Uganda in 2008.
“In 2012, we started work up in the area where we have now built a secondary school. We started really with one primary there and there was a cluster of eight primaries, what we would see almost as feeder primaries, but there was no local secondary.
“There was about 6,000 kids in those schools, and you saw maybe 100 to 150, in P1, but maybe only about 15 or 20 in P7, because there was no hope of getting into secondary education, particularly girls, as boys were prioritised through school rather than girls. The girls were losing out quite significantly and there was an awful lot of early pregnancy and abuse of girls.
“We did a lot of fundraising and the project basically opened the secondary school.”
Diika Maternity, built through Charlene’s Project with support from Richhill Methodist Church.
The family has continued to work with that community of eight primary schools in Kiryandongo.
And while Charlene Secondary School is also now complete, work continues on the addition of vocational classrooms, which are now up to “window level”.
David’s Half Marathon fundraiser will help bring in the money necessary to finish the work and fit-out, before it is handed over to Ugandan leadership and Charlene’s Project concludes.
Already over £2,000 has been raised towards the £3,000 target to complete what needs to be done.
David, like all the family, is actively involved in Charlene’s Project.
The Barr family planting a mango tree in Charlene’s memory.
He has taken pupils from his own school in County Down to visit Uganda and let them see what has been put in place and realised in his late sister’s name.
Said Dickie: “It is eye-opening for young people from here when they see and realise just what they have compared to what people in an undeveloped country have. Kids there are hungry for education, but so often they don’t get the opportunity.”
While Charlene’s Project has a “Christian background to it”, because Charlene herself “had a very deep faith”, the school in Uganda is one which welcomes and embraces all children.
Some of the team working with children in school.
“It is quite a mixed community there, Muslim, Christian, and certainly very, very much a community that is working together, very much rural, agricultural, but very much hand to mouth,” explained Dickie. “I’ve been back and forward, I suppose, 20 plus times over the years. We’ve had good relationships with the community and the big challenge has been raising up leaders in the community to take things forward.”
To that end, the Charlene Education Foundation, a community-based organisation in Uganda and similar to a charity, has been actively working.
“What we’ve really been doing is training up and supporting so that really, as Charlene’s Project ends and we close the charity, that there is a Ugandan entity,” added Dickie. ”There’s a couple of different parts of that. One part would be, obviously, the secondary school, and another part would be the model community where we’re working with the primary schools and the communities around them to try and help them around agricultural practice and around sustainable income.
Charlene’s own words.
“I certainly would be back and forward afterwards, but we’d be going more in an advisory capacity, because what we’ve always tried to do is not create a dependency where, ultimately, it’s seen that it’s the folk from better off countries will provide for them. They have to be self-sustainable themselves, so that’s always been the model we’re aimed at, that it will be self-sustainable.
“They may well look for other areas where they can draw income, but from the point of view of the school, the school fees are set, where, for the local children, it’s at a lower level, and we aim for a good high level education, both academic and vocational, so that we draw people from outside who maybe are a little bit better off so they can subsidise the local children.”
Over £2.5 million has been raised during the lifetime of Charlene’s Project and the family are proud that very little of that has, unlike some charities, been directed towards covering overheads and wages.
The money has delivered so much and what has been achieved on the ground has meant so much to the Barr family as a whole.
“I think it’s a legacy at the end of the day,” said Dickie, “and I know it has had an impact on all of us as a family, because obviously the kids grew up and a lot of them were even influenced in their career choices; with regards to Rebecca, she did nursing midwifery, and three have done teaching.
A lasting legacy…Charlene Secondary School.
“So there’s an element, I think, seeing the needs out there, has impacted on their lives now. Three of them have children of their own, very small children, but there’s no doubt about it, it has a knock-on effect on their own view of life.
Teacher training.
“I think for us over the years, it has kept Charlene very much alive. She was quite a character and certainly she would probably be saying, ‘what’s taking you so long?’. Whenever she was unwell in a hospital bed, even during those last months before she passed away, she would have been doing replies, individually thanking people.
“She was picked up at that stage in a number of interviews, on BBC and UTV, when she was alive. She said, ‘I don’t like this, but I’m doing this for the kids in Uganda’. And there’s no doubt about it, folk here, I would have to say, are truly amazing. A lot of it’s been small amounts. There’s been a number of hefty donations, but lots have been small amounts; even in the early days, kids were doing collections around doors and things to bring money to Charlene. Folk are just good, folk are very good, very generous.”
The Barr family know that without that ongoing support over the past 16 years they would not have been able to achieve so much and for that they will be forever grateful.
One of the two vocational blocks in progress.
Now, as they aim to wind up on Charlene’s Project next August, they are asking once again for people to consider donating to this latest fundraiser to complete all that they want to do.
Added Dickie: “I would just like to say a massive, massive thank-you to local folk for all their support and we want to finish well. We want to ensure that as much as possible is done.
“I look forward to visiting, but not visiting from the point of view of having to provide for needs, but to give advice and support, because they’re really good people, struggling against all the odds that we don’t even recognise, but really good people.
“Kids are just like our kids, with hopes and dreams and often no opportunity to realise those hopes and dreams and, we pray, a little bit of what’s been done through Charlene’s legacy will help some of the children achieve those hopes and dreams.”
If you would like to donate to David’s Half Marathon fundraiser for Charlene’s Project, you can do so here.
And to find out more about the work of Charlene’s Project,visit here.
Mothers with produce from the model garden.
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