Fellows' Newsletter: Impact Stories.

  I embarked on this fellowship program last year in early January following an intensive one month training during which the fellows were taken through the things to do while in the classroom and outside. Nervousness characterized my first day in the field, being uncertain of whatever was awaiting me, but the children's eagerness to learn and come to school every other day ignited my enthusiasm to support them in all possible ways, and I subsequently braved out. Initially, their turn up was very low, nonetheless, I liaised with different stakeholders in first and second term through a campaign that was named THE BACK TO SCHOOL CAMPAIGN. That ultimately made the parents' engagement towards their children's studies to wax since we had a number of meetings with them. All through the campaign, the parents' responses were positive and that was so because of the noteworthy support that my supervisor had been rendering. “The fellowship is a whole life changing experience be...

  When I first saw Sophie, my heart sank.   I was not comfortable seeing a child looking so helpless, with bruises on her body and bleeding lips. She is an eight-year-old girl in my p.1 class at Kamudooke Primary School. As a teacher leader in the Teach for Uganda leadership program, I was intrigued when I saw these children. They were extremely happy except for Sophie whom I noticed seemed different from the rest. She often slept during lessons.  Like most kids I know in my class, Sophie is also a product of a broken home. Her father remarried and so did her mother, leaving her and her siblings hanging. Her maternal aunt has custody over her. Due to her worrying health state, she became the first child I paid home visit to. I engaged my co-teacher and sought ways to reach her family and investigate why they would send a sick child to school, with wounded legs -barefooting 2kms to school, on heels with bite marks of rats exposing her soft flesh red as the petals of...

  I was asked recently by a new recruit how it is that I still have a high level of energy doing what I do, having been placed in the ‘field’ (a Universal Primary Education government school in a rural low-income community) a year ago. I gave the shortest answer possible that didn’t warrant more questions – “the children that have been entrusted to me”. Truth is, no one will understand how it is so, no matter how small I break the words. It is a deep system of psychological instruction, built upon layers of thought processes and actions. I get drained like the rest too, I fall, and whatnot, but at the end of the day I get to remind myself why I started and why I need to finish. These ‘whys’, form the central part of the system that keeps me afloat. “ I am willing to go the deepest of ends even if only one child can walk into that dawn of equal opportunities brought about by quality and inclusive education for all ” I have a manila card pasted against the unpainted wall of my ro...