The second lockdown in Uganda due to the increased cases of Covid-19 placed some of the children on our programs on a standstill but also led to the emergency of a situation that forced us to divert our resources to support the most vulnerable families locked home without a means to feed their families, access to essentials and also helping less privileged children to access education.
Since most families live a hand-to-mouth kind of life, the immediate closure of businesses affected many families since they are now unable to buy food and essentials for their families. Through our feeding program, we started extending food and essentials support to the less privileged parents and to the most vulnerable families.
Education during Lockdown.
Immediately after the closure of schools, the government through the ministry of education and sports directed students to continue accessing education using different media including television, radio, newspapers, and the Internet. The used media to access education excludes many poor families who cannot afford to access them. We thank you for helping us to provide homeschooling opportunities to our children in foster families. We are providing children with access to education through printing out study materials downloaded from the internet and duplicating the work got from newspapers, and distribute it to children to learn from home. We also provide radio to homes and children gather around the radio to learn. Currently, our homeschooling program reach has grown and we are already supporting 50 children in Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, and universities to access education. We now want to consolidate this program and also expand it to reach less privileged children who need it most.
Watch the video to learn how some of the children we support learn through a radio.
Hear what one of the children say about the homeschooling program
" Every morning I wake and prepare myself to attend my class at 9:30 am at CBS Radio, the class is so interesting and I have learned a lot since the lockdown started. I am happy that I can access education during this lockdown" Nabulya Maria P.4
Children need to access education more than ever. Most less privileged children who missed education during the first lockdown ended up dropping out of school even when schools reopen before this second lockdown.
According to Headteacher Ssunga primary school, 80% of the students who dropped out of school after the first lockdown are the less privileged children who didn't get a chance to access education during the first lockdown.
Education is vital in keeping children safe and under control since they are left with little time of being idle. This saves children from joining peer groups that forces them to commit anti-social behaviors like using drugs, theft, commercial sex to mention but a few, and this makes them unfit to join school when they are open again thus the increased number of school drop out.
This 42 days lockdown will soon come to an end but we are not sure when the schools will be fully opened for all students to return to school again.
Children need to keep on accessing education to help them not lose hope for education and the only ways for them to access education
Limited resources are hindering us from enabling less privileged children to access education. And we would like to invite you to get involved and we together support less privileged children who have access to available learning channels to access education at their respective homes.
This is what your support can do.
Donate a Radio: (£7) ($9) (€8)
Equipment for online learning of students especially those at the university who are in their semi and final years.
Donate a Smart-phone: (£78) ($100) (€94) 10 are needed but we appreciate whatever you can donate.
Donate a Laptop: (£345) ($444) (€414) 3 are needed but if we get 2 or 1 we really appreciate it.
Donate Internet Data Bundles: (£4) ($5) (€6) per week
For downloading study materials for home-schooling program
Anything helps! DONATE your way: www.youthwithavision.info/donate to provide Education opportunities to the less privileged children trapped by Covid-19.
Thank you for whatever you can contribute.