Help Children with Learning Difficulties in Uganda

Happy 2018, if you hadn’t heard from us yet! We are too excited about everything this year has in store for us, and about what we have in store for our partner schools. And guess what? We are not just working with partner schools anymore, but with partner organizations as well. All this from our brand new office space (much love to you if you donated towards this)!

We promised a more sustainable approach in setting up support for children with learning difficulties in Uganda, and that is exactly what we are in the middle of right now. Not by working directly with learners who experience these difficulties, but by equipping teachers, parents and school management teams with the knowledge and skills to do this. In the end, we want all schools in Uganda to be able to support these children without our help! That starts with choosing the right role to play as an organization.

Because of your donations, we have started 2018 with not just one, but two partner schools in Gulu: Gulu Primary School and Gulu PTC Demonstration School. The new school year has just begun in Uganda, so we have already had the first meetings with the school management teams to finalize our detailed plans for the year. Most of the children we worked with in 2016 and 2017 have returned to school by now, so we were able to catch up with them as well. We did the final literacy and numeracy tests with them to determine their progress and we are impressed! Okene, for example, was not able to read at all at the start of 2017. Although he still finds it difficult - who wouldn’t, if you have to start from zero - he is reading 16 words per minute at the moment!

Did you hear us say partner organizations? That’s right, even though the schools were closed for 2 months around the Christmas holidays, we partnered with Unified for Uganda and organized a holiday program for their secondary students. A popular term in Uganda is ‘read hard at school’, but how do you do this? We spent a full week together with 20 students focusing on their personal learning style, setting goals and planning accordingly, processing information for different subjects, and making the most helpful summaries. Their feedback: “Everyone who didn’t show up, missed out!”

We want to open up trainings like this to more students, so we are already planning for the May holidays! And not just for students...

Trainings for other education-based organizations are coming up as well! We like being unique, but we like organizations that know how to include children with learning difficulties in their projects even more. That’s why we have started offering professional training to other organizations in Uganda, to ensure a ‘learning difficulties friendly’ approach that reaches as many children as possible.

That’s it for now dear friend! Of course we will update you again soon(er than you think). In the meantime, keep an eye on our social media pages (Facebook: @backupuganda, Instagram: @backupuganda, Twitter: @Backup_Uganda) and website (www.backupuganda.org) for the latest. All our love from Gulu, and remember: every donation you make will through GlobalGiving helps us run our project at more schools in Northern Uganda!