Improve Learning Outcomes for Ugandan Children

We spent the past month traversing the entire country, training and engaging over 1,700 teachers and school principles in 20 different locations. We have expereineced great cooperation and a warm welcome everywhere we went, especially from local government (district) education officials. In the past, efforts to cooperate with government officials was not easily forthcoming, however, this year, they were all eager to be involved, designate staff to our activities and actively engage in mobilising schools, securing free venues for the training workshops and talking to service providers. This is huge.

In many of these places, like Arua, in West Nile, we had 415 teachers show up for the training, the room we had got for this grew smaller, and we ran out of seats, the teachers who came for the training did not give up or walk away, they stayed and stood in doorways and windows to make sure they catch on what we were sharing. This is unprecedented, given the fact that, apart from a lunchtime meal, we were not paying a transport refund or facilitation fee, a common occurance with NGOs.

These high numbers are evident that word about the impact of our programs in schools has gone out ahead of us and every school principle, teacher or local government official who heard of this program was eager to get involved. We hope that as many as they turn out and get to participate, the impact we are creating will spread further and many more children will be able to be excited about learning and choose to stay in school. 

The efforts to improve learning outcomes are growing stronger, thanks to your continued support. Many teachers and educators are eager to work with us to find a lasting solution to the low literacy and high school drop outs that we face every day.

In the last three months we have also developed a partnership with World Vision, expanding and intergrating our literacy program in all their 650 schools across the country. Our relationship with the Ministry of Education also contiues to grow stronger.

In the next three months, we shall be conducting several reading activities in schools and distributing books as part of our #10MBooksto10MKids campaign to get children to fall in love with books, LEARN to READ so they can self teach. We shall also be involved with several schools supporting them to set up Reading Clubs and organise School based Spelling Bees. In June and July, we shall conduct our district and regional Spelling Bee.

As this effort continues, we still need your help, to close this project and to hit our fundraising target of $40,000. We currently have $500 to go. Any little bit matters. If you want to chip in, feel free to go to http://bit.ly/SUPPORTREADING