[from UVa Today]

Hundreds of students, families and local leaders joined in a seven-hour chorus of celebration recently to commemorate the grand opening of the Building Tomorrow Academy of Gita, a school in Uganda supported by the University of Virginia community. The academy's nearly 200 students headlined a song and dance marathon that lasted well in to the evening to show their appreciation and excitement for the opportunity to learn inside a permanent classroom.

"You have cleared the land, you have carried materials, you have filled jerry cans of water, you have planted kassava and you have made this site your own," Building Tomorrow Uganda director Joseph Kalisa said at the Aug. 6 dedication. "Your work has just begun. Now it is time to support the students who will sit, study and prosper because of these classrooms."

Area leaders and officials praised the commitment of parents and U.Va. for their outreach to the community.

"We are grateful for what has to be one of Waksio District's best-built primary schools," headmaster M. Zizinga Ssemuyaga said. "We are excited for all that is to come here and hope that the parents of these children and local leaders will support us moving forward."

The academy is the result of Building Tomorrow's first multidisciplinary collaboration on a college campus. Throughout the 2007-08 school year, U.Va. undergraduate architecture and engineering students in Architecture Studio reCOVER and the Engineering in Context Capstone Design Program crafted a design for a new 10-room schoolhouse, funded by the student chapter of Building Tomorrow at U.Va. and the School of Architecture.

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