Uganda's blog

Teach A Man To Fish Uganda offer workshops to school directors, head teachers and teachers in Uganda who are interested in the Teach A Man To Fish model of sustainable education and want to learn about the benefits it can bring to their schools. We held an introduction workshop at Lweza training center on 10th February which looked at "Overcoming the challenges and creating solutions for sustainable education in Uganda".  We were joined by some furry friends!

In Uganda, the academic year begins in in February and ends at the end of November. This means that students have their longest holiday of two months over the Christmas period in preparation for moving to their next class in the new academic year.

Hello,

I’m Giulia, I’m 22 and I’m studying biotechnology in Milan and Paris. I’m studying malaria, a big deal in Africa. The past summer I’ve been in Makondo and Ondati as a “Teach a Man to Fish” volunteer, teaching the secondary school students a health course and running computer training.

Nasaka Gorette is a 15 year old female student in her first year of secondary school at St Denis. Her close family consists of Mum, Dad and her baby sister and she lives in Kyamukama village, a 30 minute walk from St Denis, when she’s not boarding at school during term time. She is originally from the Eastern Region of Uganda and therefore speaks Lugishu as well as English and the local language in Makondo, Luganda. Nasaka’s mum is a store owner selling everyday items, and her Dad is a farmer with 9 acres of land, growing bananas, cabbages, sweet potatoes and beans.

Aside from the practical angle of running the businesses day to day, students are now taking ‘Business Project Lessons’ once a week. These draw on the Ugandan Entrepreneurship Curriculum, but allow students to get involved in practical classroom activities based on the school businesses that give them real life experience of planning a business. The activities are specifically designed for students without previous knowledge of business and to be as fun and engaging as possible.

St Denis has been the lucky host of several visitors over the last couple of months, whose contributions have been extremely valuable to the progression of the Self Sufficiency Project. These have included accountants, volunteers, programme managers and other Teach A Man To Fish staff!

Enough of me telling you what's going on here in Uganda, here are two accounts by St Denis graduates telling us what they are doing now and how the skills they learnt at St Denis are helping them. The accounts are summaries of interviews recently recorded for the upcoming St Denis film: 

The fifth St Denis Business, the Posho (or maize) Mill, is soon to be under way, once fundraising for the electricity permit reaches its target. The poor old mill has been waiting for its electricity connection for some time, after the electricity board demanded 25 million Ugandan shillings (Around £6000) for installation of a transformer. That’s a lot of cash for a remote Ugandan community!

The remote Makondo community has been busy with the coffee harvest these last few months, with any spare time spent picking coffee beans in the plantations. Nearly every home has been surrounded with drying beans for weeks and weeks and people are getting ready to celebrate cashing in on their crop. Mills are pumping away to remove the husks ready for beans to be sold for roasting.

During the easter holidays, students created a rota for working at the St Denis computer business, so they could assist with serving customers, as well as registering for email accounts and brushing up on their typing skills. Eight students came for two days each, and learnt how to photocopy, email, design invitations and calculate the monthly income.