On a visit home to his native Uganda, Achilles Tebandeke couldn't ignore the plight of the children who were braving harsh elements to just try to get an education. His family and his colleagues in the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic in Rochester helped him figure out a way to remedy that.

---

Achilles Tebandeke knows the value of a good education and believes that everyone should have access to it, regardless of where they are. Tebandeke has been a nurse at Generose for nearly the entirety of his career, which began in 1995 at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

On a trip to his ancestral home of Namayamba, Uganda, in 2017, he saw something he found difficult to ignore.

"We noticed small kids struggling to go to school," Tebandeke says.

Children as young as six were walking several miles through dust, rain, blistering sun and other harsh elements to get to school. It meant waking up very early to make the trek and they would return home late at night, after dark. Day after day after day.

"Safety-wise, you never knew what would happen to the kids. So they had to move in groups," Tebandeke says. "If a child missed the group, it meant having to stay home from school that day."

And when they did get there, classes were held wherever it was possible — under mango trees and in dilapidated buildings, in most cases.

Tebandeke and his wife, Sarah, knew they needed to do something.

Without any money at his disposal, Tebandeke knew there wasn't much he could do in that moment. But Sarah encouraged him not to give up.

A little help goes a long way

The plight of the kids didn't stop haunting him, not even when he was back at work at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

Tebandeke voiced his thoughts to Andrea Eickhoff, a colleague in the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic in Rochester, where Tebandeke was working at the time.

He told Eickhoff that his dream was to put up a small building where the kids could attend school safely and be sheltered from the elements.

"What if we could give them someplace to go to that was near, instead of walking for miles?" Tebandeke said to Eickhoff.

"Why not start a Go Fund Me?" Eickhoff said.

"I didn't even know what that was," Tebandeke recalls with a laugh. "I am not very good with computers."

Eickhoff offered to help get things rolling. Once the Go Fund Me site — an online fundraising venue — was established, the response from colleagues in the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic was overwhelmingly great, Tebandeke says.

This was toward the end of 2017, and even with funds in place, the project was just getting started. A local in Namayamba heard of Tebandeke's project and sold him two acres of land at a price that was a lot less expensive than it would be today. Just like that, the idea of the M&S Primary School began to feel more real.

The very first building that the school was housed in was modest with two classrooms and an office. The first classes had about five kids enrolled. But it was enough to get people excited.

"People said, 'Thank you. Thank you,' over and over again," Tebandeke says.

Tebandeke continued his fundraising efforts in the U.S. and slowly began adding on to the school.

In 2019, with Tebandeke's encouragement, five of his colleagues from the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic accompanied Tebandeke to Namayamaba to get a closer look at the school.

"I wanted them to see where their money was going," Tebandeke says. "I wanted them to see what we had done and what we needed to do."

The funds raised through GoFundMe and other efforts in the U.S. have gone toward purchasing the land and building the school. Families with children enrolled in the school are charged a nominal fee to offset expenses associated with running the school.

Growing pains

As enrollment expanded, it quickly became obvious that not every family had the means to pay for their children's education. But Tebandeke found a way around it anyway.

Since the school provides breakfast and lunch for the kids, Tebandeke asked the parents if they could donate items that could go toward preparing those meals.

"If you can afford to bring us some food — beans or cassava or anything else — that would help," he told the parents.

The school has now grown to include five classes with around 90 kids, ranging in age from six to 15. Some of the kids, who come from families where their parents are illiterate, have now learned to read and write.

"The parents can now buy a newspaper and have their kids read it to them," Tebandeke says.

The school includes a building that houses teachers who come from far-off towns to help fulfill Tebandeke's mission of making education accessible to all.

The school also provides access to services to the broader community to improve health literacy and provide a social gathering space — named the PRC Hall, in a nod to the generosity of colleagues from the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic — for community events.

As the school has grown, so has the generosity of the people supporting Tebandeke's cause. His family — especially his wife and sons — have donated generously in finances and time to the school. Sarah continues to play a big part in maintaining the school's operations.

Tebandeke's colleagues in the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic have donated necessary items — pens, toothpaste, first-aid kits and more — to make daily living a little bit easier for the kids so they can focus on school.

"I want to emphasize that this is something that has been done collectively," Tebandeke says. "I am so proud of the people I know."

What's next

Future plans for the school include a nurse’s office, a children’s library, expanding the residential area for the school’s live-in teachers, and building a community garden. Tebandeke plans to eventually transfer the primary management of the school to local community members, empowering them to maintain the school’s position in the community.

More information

Learn more about the M&S Primary School.

---

HELPFUL LINKS

• Explore Mayo Clinic.
• Check out careers at Mayo Clinic.
• Request an appointment.