Entandikwa Ennungi (Bright Beginnings)

Community Nutrition: Using a World Vision programme known as ‘PD HEARTH’ we have been running community nutrition groups in six different villages. Parents come together and cook for their families as a community for 12 days learning how to use local and accessible produce to provide balanced meals for their young children. A preventative to malnutrition we continue to follow up with communities for a year after the first meeting, measuring the weights and tracking the progress of the children. 

Fun of Phonics: In partnership with the local Education Office, we are working in 60 Government Primary schools across Mbale City supporting their early years teachers in the teaching of early literacy. We have trained over 300 teachers in a phonics programme that has specifically been adapted for the Ugandan classroom. We continue to follow up with each teacher and support them in their classroom practice.

Justine has been a teacher for nearly 20 years in the Mbale region. She loves her job and is dedicated to her work. Like many teachers she is working with classes of over 100 children with little available resources. Many children across Uganda after seven years of primary education still struggle to read and write, despite the efforts of teachers like Justine.

Justine attended our “Fun of Phonics” programme, which was specifically designed for a Ugandan classroom, learning how to teach reading and writing to her pupils in an interactive way. She has been really encouraged to see how the children are responding to this program. She told us, “Some of our Primary 3 children are not only reading English better but are also using this new knowledge to help them read local language. It is so encouraging to see our hard work begin to pay off.”