Cape Town: A Ugandan school has been named as one of the top 10 schools globally by World's Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-HQN9D7vsProject Shelter Wakadogo supports vulnerable and hard-to-reach children.
The category recognises that adversity will come in many forms for schools, including conflict, climate-related disasters, poverty, or a pandemic. It assesses how the school builds character, both individually and as a community, to support the greater resilience of all learners.
Wakadogo was founded in 2009, in the aftermath of two decades of civil war and violence committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, which displaced more than a million people.
The school, in Pece Acoyo in Gulu District, has grown from two classrooms to serve more than 450 learners. It has one of the highest learner-retention rates in the country.
At the onset of Covid-19, Uganda, like many other countries, faced government-imposed lockdowns, which adversely affected the running of major sectors, including education.
With less than 9% of the rural population having access to the internet, many schools could not continue with other learning models.
But the team at Project Shelter Wakadogo were determined to continue providing education to their learners.
They developed a home-schooling programme and distributed learning kits and government study modules to learners in order to support face-to-face learning, led by the teachers.
By the end of the lockdown, they had conducted more than 36 000 door-to-door lessons.
The decision to run the programme was critical, particularly for girls, because school closures across Uganda saw children forced into the labour market, and a rise in teenage pregnancy and gender-based violence, says the Project Shelter.
The result is the need to prepare and plan for hybrid learning, it said.
If they win the prize, Project Shelter Wakadogo plans to use the funds to set up an online learning platform to facilitate hybrid and catch-up learning in case schools close again. It will also share its approach and technology with other schools in the region.
"It is a great honour for Wakadogo to feature among the top nominees for the World's Best School Prize," says the school’s head teacher Odong Charles Kigundi.
"Our greatest desire is to see more children receive quality education.
“This prize will enable us to provide more scholarships for marginalised and underprivileged children in the community.”
In addition to providing a safe and child-friendly environment for learners, Wakadogo School offers school meals, medical care, sports and music programmes, and quality education for vulnerable children.
Announcement: Top 10 Shortlisted Schools for the Inaugural World's Best ... https://t.co/Es9Q2AMikU via @YouTube Delighted to be among the top 10 schools in the world for Environment Action @GEMS_ME @GEMSGLS @KHDA @T4EduC
— Asha Alexander UN Accredited #ClimateChange Leader (@ashex16) June 9, 2022
"Our current annual operating cost is about $125 000 (about R2 million), which will continue to increase as more students enrol at the school.
“As a school entirely funded by donations and contributions from the community, we are always looking for partners to support our various programmes and allow us to keep providing a safe and quality learning environment for our little ones ,” Kigundi says.
The World's Best School Prize is a project by T4 Education, a global organisation committed to providing engaging tools, initiatives, and events for teachers to improve education.
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