Building Tomorrow, a new group on Furman’s campus, created a stir in front of the library this past Wednesday with their first ever fund raising event: Bike to Uganda.
This event involved students, representing an organization or participating independently, riding four stationary bikes in front of the library.
Participants signed up to ride for 30 minutes at a time, aiming to be part of an effort to have people riding from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. The goal was to collectively bike the distance from Greenville to Uganda.
Although they didn’t quite make it to Uganda, the fundraiser did raise $2000.
Despite all the hard work and effort put into the creation of Bike to Uganda, it only represents a piece of the goal of the organization as a whole.
One of the members of the Building Tomorrow team, Anna Sheppard, explains that the end goal is to raise $60,000. This money will be used to build a school in Uganda, which will provide a safe and stable environment for the children to learn.
One of her favorite parts of the vision of Building Tomorrow is that “all of the materials for building the school will come from Uganda itself in order to help boost the economy.”
The people of the community where the school is built also play a key role in the process. If a family works on building the school, the children get to attend for free.
On top of that, the government will ultimately take control of the schools through hiring teachers and managing upkeep. In this way the project itself becomes more community-oriented.
The Furman chapter of Building Tomorrow got started last spring after the founder George Srour, a former student at William and Mary, came to talk about the organization early last semester.
The mission of Building Tomorrow is to provide access to primary education for the children of Uganda. This organization has already funded the building of 10 schools thanks to the efforts of various chapters all over the East Coast. This is a goal that the Furman chapter hopes to reach in the near future.
The Vice President of the Furman chapter, Shelby Rimmler, echoes this sentiment as she expresses her excitement to “see how the organization grows over the next few years” in order to reach this target.
If the success of the Bike to Uganda event is any indication, Building Tomorrow is on their way to bringing happiness, education, and excitement to the school children of Uganda.