NAMING OF AMBROSOLI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
Giuseppe Ambrosoli was born in a small village in Northern Italy on the 25th July 1923. He was the seventh of 8 children. He studied Medicine in Milan and though he had to stop his studies because of the war, in 1949 he graduated with the highest marks.
Soon after finishing University, he asked to leave for Africa to work for the needy. On the 1st February in 1956 he sailed to Africa , after being ordained as a Verona Father. After a few months spent in Gulu he was sent to Kalongo where there was a small dispensary and maternity centre of 30 beds. Within a few years Fr. Ambrosoli, with the help of his confreres, built a hospital. Today Kalongo Hospital has 354 beds. The Kalongo School of Midwifery in Northern Uganda has trained more than 500 nurses.
Dr. Ambrosoli was not only a great, humble doctor and skilled surgeon, but also a gifted teacher and master. Many doctors who worked as volunteers in Uganda had the opportunity to work and learn from him. Some volunteers, after their encounter with Fr. Ambrosoli, even discovered their vocation as sisters, priests or brothers.
On the 13th February 1987, Dr. Ambrosoli with the medical personnel,9 sisters, 150 sick and 1500 soldiers and civilians left the hospital, for Lira, on the orders of the military authority.
Dr. Ambrosoli died in Lira on the 27th March 1987, due to renal failure, without any medical assistance. His body returned to Kalongo 7 years later on the 7th April 1994.
Among the first parents who started the Italian School of Kampala some were doctors who learnt the basics of surgery or had the opportunity to meet and admire him. Some had even been his patients . They decided therefore to name the school Giuseppe Ambrosoli and his name has been kept as we develop: Ambrosoli .
Who are we? A brief history
In 1989 a group of Italian parents met to start a new School: some of them were working for development agencies and NGOs, others were professionals working in Kampala , others again were long-term residents or married to Ugandan citizens.
All were sharing the desire of being protagonists of their children's education, and they set two aims to the new school. Firstly that it could be an educative environment where the children could learn and grow forming relationships with responsible and motivated teachers. Secondly that the curriculum could be such to enable the children to fit back into either an Italian school system or into an international school.
The newly born Italian School was dedicated to Father Giuseppe Ambrosoli, an Italian priest. He was an excellent medical doctor, known personally by some of the parents, who spent the whole of his life in the north of Uganda working to bring the truth and the life in a difficult situation of poverty and war. He died during the troubles in the north in 1987.
The small school did very well, to the satisfaction of children, parents and teachers. After a few years it was felt that a further step was needed. The school was opened to the international community, to enable the Italian children to participate more to the social life around them and to offer to children of other nationalities the caring education that the Italian children had been experiencing in the school.
As a result, Ambrosoli International School was started. At first it was only the Nursery and then it progressively expanded to the Primary classes to where we are now.
The enthusiastic commitment for educating children continues to grow!
