Nkurungiro School is located in southwest Uganda in Kisoro District
Nkurungiro Primary school is private church managed institution located in Gisiza village, Gasovu Parish Nyarusiza Sub County in Kisoro district South West of Uganda (GPS 799784.2, 9852560.4). The school serves as a ‘child development centre’ of Compassion International.
On the 27 of September 2013, lightning struck Nkurungiro primary school leaving at least four people dead. The incident happened at about 1:30pm when the deceased were taking shelter at the verandah of a classroom block during a heavy down pour. The dead included one Niyonzima 22, a Rwandan National, 23-year-old Mahirwe, Habasa aged 20 and Denis Niringimana, a six-year-old primary one pupil.
In 2015, DEHN-SOHNE, a company known internationally for manufacture and installation of high quality lightning protection materials, working through DEHN-Africa volunteered to supply materials, design and installation expertise to protect this school. Installation was done in March 2017.
Gerrit Hendrik Meyer and Kirk Risch, from South Africa and pictured in some of the photos on the Runyanya School page, were selfless in their support of this project, designing the Lightning Protection Systems (LPS), traveling to Uganda more than once to train our staff of engineers and installers and to work on the installations themselves for the three schools (Runyanya, Buramba and Nkurungiro) in our first wave of 'Lightning Kills! Save a Life in Africa' campaign in 2016 and 2017.
Nkurungiro School currently has 197 boys and 167 girls enrolled with 17 full time staff. A lightning protection system was installes at Nkurungiro school in 2017.
In 2019, Head Teacher (complete letter here) wrote to say
- Our children are now studying very well without fear when it rains.
- The community around are no longer fearing to take shelter at our school; in fact, if it rains they all want to take shelter there because our place has been known as safer place due to your systems.
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Nkurungiro was one of the first three schools where ACLENet installed LPS. Unfortunately, the entire system needs to be replaced due to vandalism, erosion, new building construction and elimination of a few buildings protected by the first installation.A new LPS was designed by our Lightning Protection Working Group and materials were purchased through the 2023 Ludwick Family Foundation Grant. We have applied for a grant to cover the installation cost of this revised and updated LPS. We would appreciate your donations to support this so that the children are again safe from lighting injury. See link above or the floating DONATE button if you wish to help -- THANK YOU!
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Covid eliminated contact with schools so an interim inspection and report of repairs necessary could not be done during that period.
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Nkurungiro Primary School and overview ot lightning protection system
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Classroom blocks at Nkurungiro School
