To mark its 30th year of operation, World Vision Uganda last week decided to donate education materials to 600,000 children in 600 schools across over 20 districts.
The districts, which include Kibaale, Gulu, Buliisa, Tororo, and Busia Bundibugyo, received reading materials worth Shs 1.2bn. While handing over the materials at a ceremony at the World Vision head offices in Nakasero last week, the group national director, Gilbert Kamanga, said the organisation’s main objective was to improve the quality of education and learning outcomes in the country.
“World Vision endeavors to see every child in Uganda access quality education and relevant localized reading materials,” Kamanga said.
Receiving the books on behalf of the districts, the ministry’s assistant commissioner for Primary Education, Tony Mukasa-Lusambu, thanked World Vision for targeting poorly-performing districts.
“The districts that World Vision has chosen, especially those in the East, are the ones that the ministry has always thought something was lacking,” Mukasa-Lusambu said.
The materials include 1,800 thematic curriculum charts for P1 classes, 50,000 P1 Mathematics and English practice books, 50,000 P2 Mathematics and English practice books, 60,000 books for P4 (15,000 books for each of the four subjects of Mathematics, Science, English and Social Studies) and 1,200 blackboard geometry sets.
In the next phase, according to Kamanga, materials for P3 and P5 as well as local language reading materials for P1, P2 and P3 will be procured including 200,000 local storybooks.
“I call upon all the teachers who will receive these books to ensure that the children use these books,” said Mukasa–Lusambu. He later added that any school that will not use their books will have them taken away and given to other schools that are ready to use them.
The move comes in the midst of some interventions. Currently, 76 classrooms and 200 stances of pit latrines are under construction while 3,400 teachers are to be trained on positive discipline and preventing school-based violence; over 500,000 children in more than 800 schools will be reached.
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