Hillel of Greater Toronto continued to promote the importance of tikkun olam with a recent trip to Uganda to build a school in a town there.

Ten students from the GTA traveled to Uganda last month to help build a school. 

Ten students from across the Greater Toronto Area travelled to the Ramogi Village near the town of Tororo in eastern Uganda.

This is the second time in as many years that Hillel, the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), a group that grants funds to non-governmental organizations with the aim of alleviating poverty and disease in developing countries, and the Uganda Orphans Rural Development Program (UORDP) have organized a trip for Canadian students to come to the town to build a school.

Meyer Mechanic, a third-year economics student at York University took part in the trip last month from May 12 to 29.

The 21-year-old, who is on the Hillel board as the city-wide student chair, spoke to The CJN about his experience.

“We were there to work with the developing community there. The town has about 600 people, and we went down to build a school, kitchen and latrine, as well as interact with the community, learn a little about the problems facing it and experience something totally different,” Mechanic said.

“When we first got there we wound up playing with the children, we wound up interacting freely with the community right away. We had work to do in the morning, and [we learned] about the community in the afternoon. Sometimes we had off time and we would play with the kids, talk with the adults and just really tried to experience the community and figure out what was going on.”

In addition to bonding with the members of the community in Ramogi, Mechanic said he also bonded with the participants on the trip.

“The students came from all over the GTA, and it was an amazing show of diversity. We had students of all walks of life and from all different campuses.”

The group worked toward a common goal – to improve the quality of life for the village children by giving them access to a new school.

“School is free in Uganda – it is just a matter of where the schools are, so the fact that there is a school there now, allows more kids to go,” Mechanic said. “There are now two schools there [in Ramogi Village] because Hillel built a school there last year.”

And the trip participants, along with local builders, worked hard to reach that goal.

“There was physical labour involved. We were moving bricks, we were wheelbarrowing, we were plastering, painting, digging,” he said, adding that when the two-week trip was over, the school was built, painted and decorated, but the construction of the kitchen and latrine were still underway.

For Mechanic, the most meaningful aspect of the trip was the practice of Jewish values.

“One of the greatest mitzvot there is to provide others with an education. We were able to experience that by giving them a school, and they were able to give that to us based on what we learned on the trip,” said Mechanic, who took a year off from his studies at York last year to study at a yeshiva in Jerusalem called Or David.

“Just being there was rewarding. You see smiles on kids’ faces, you see the smiles on people around you… You really know that you’re helping out there, you see what you’re doing and they appreciate it. When you walk into the school and you know it is going to be used in the future, that is a fantastic feeling.”