enjuba | Teaching Ugandan Children to Read, Count and Thrive

National Spelling Bee

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:56:57 -0700

Date: October 17, 2026

Venue: Kampala Serena Hotel

The Difference a Story Makes: A Tale of Two Boys and the Cost of Learning poverty

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:41:19 -0700

Kato and Lule grew up surrounded by sugarcane fields, in a rural village in eastern Uganda. Their parents were subsistence farmers. No money for toys. And no children’s books in either home. But only one of them ever heard a story at night.

Kato’s mother could read. Every evening, after the day’s work broke her back, she pulled her children close on the only woven mat she owned. She lit a kerosene lamp with a flame. The flame was small and yellow and smoked a little. She then opened the worn King James Version Bible, her voice soft, tired, but steady. She always read about floods and kings and miracles. Kato’s eyes never left her face. He asked questions no one in the village had answers for. He fell asleep dreaming of places he had never seen. One night he took the book himself and began sounding out the words. And in that moment, something inside him lit up and never went out again.

Lule lived three huts away. His mother could not read. And there was no lamp at night. Only the night’s cover of darkness and the sound of tired breathing. No one sat him down and opened a world. Letters on the blackboard at school stayed dead shapes. By Primary Four the shame was so heavy that he stopped going. He picked up a machete instead and disappeared into the sugarcane fields. The same fields that surrounded both boys slowly swallowed one of them.

Years later, Kato’s children sit under electric light with books of their own. Lule’s children sit in the same silence he once knew. This is what learning poverty looks like when you stop looking at the numbers and look at the faces.

In the first two weeks of the third school term, Akampa Secret visited four schools in Magamaga Town Council, where she serves as a teacher coach with enjuba. In each of these schools, she noticed that most of the teachers struggled with developing a lesson plan from the curriculum. Some of them waited the entire week for the time she would visit to ask how a lesson plan could be developed.

Akampa has been working in Mayuge since the start of the year, as part of our pioneer cohort of teacher coaches and her role involves supporting pre-primary teachers working with a simplified curriculum. This support involves weekly visits to each of the five schools in which she works, sit in on lessons and offers feedback, and offer continuous professional development for the teachers she serves.

The sessions cover how to deliver content from the simplified curriculum, how to use locally available materials in place of costly ones, and how to create an inclusive classroom environment.

When she noticed the teacher's struggles at St. Peter's Wandago Primary School she took teachers through a mini-refresher workshop delivering the simplified curriculum. In the Ansaar Muslim and Hill View Nur and Primary Schools, Akampa focused her time with the teachers on building an inclusive classroom. The main objective of these sessions is to ensure that the teachers are confident and able to deliver the curriculum to the learners. By making these sessions routine, coaches have an opportunity to collaborate with the teachers on challenges around lesson delivery and learning schemes on a weekly basis rather than waiting on a termly review....Read More

On your marks, Get set, Grow!

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 02:48:37 -0700

On 15th August, enjuba International School turned its compound into a stage for one of the year's most anticipated events: Sports Day. Months of practice came down to one morning of races, games, cheering parents and learners putting their weeks of training on full display.

Children ran through a full lineup of games, including two events set aside specifically for the Kindergarten class: blindfold and balloon balancing.

For children this young, a day like this is an essential part of their personal development. Physical games build coordination and motor skills at an age when those skills are still forming. Team-based activities teach children to wait their turn, follow instructions, and celebrate a friend's win as much as their own. And for many learners, simply performing in front of a cheering crowd, parents included, is an early lesson in confidence that a regular classroom day cannot always offer.

This is why Sports Day sits inside the same learning cycle as reading circles and number games. The skills on display on the field are the same ones that carry a child through a busy classroom.

Behind the scenes, the day rode on a great deal of preparation. Teachers described working well as a team, supporting one another to keep the day moving, and taking real pride in watching children execute activities they had been training for weeks in advance.

Parent turnout this year was the biggest yet. They cheered from the sidelines, celebrated their...Read More

"I would teach whatever came to my mind."

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 02:03:02 -0700

Namulondo Esther teaches the pre-primary section at St. Peter's Wandago Primary School in Magamaga. Before our Teacher coaching programme, she had a classroom full of children and almost nothing to guide what she taught them each day.

"Before enjuba came to Wandago, I was not lesson planning because I did not have a curriculum to guide me," Esther recalls. "I would teach whatever came to my mind."

Esther's lack of lesson plans was partly a consequence of the absence of a national pre-primary curriculum, which leaves individual schools and, in some cases, teachers to determine what to teach. Where lesson plans are available, they are often either misaligned with the lessons intended or not followed at all.

The learning experiences of children outside Esther’s classroom are often no different. Many young teachers are eager to support their learners but lack the structured curriculum and practical support to turn that enthusiasm into effective daily lessons. While the national pre-primary curriculum, currently under pilot, may bring greater uniformity, teachers remain underprepared to deliver it. This makes enjuba’s teacher coaching model more important than ever.

Why Coaching, And not Just Training

Our approach with Esther, as with all the teachers we support, wasn't a one-off workshop. It involves regular classroom observation, one-on-one coaching, lesson modelling, and consistent, constructive feedback focused specifically on lesson...Read More

Sack Races and Sunny Afternoons:

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 02:55:51 -0700

There is nothing quite like the sound of a nursery school on Sports Day. The mix of laughter, cheering parents, and the occasional dramatic balloon pop. Over the past few weeks, that sound has filled compounds across Mayuge, as three of our program schools held Sports Day for their youngest learners.

At Ansaar Muslim, the head teacher went all out, arranging a speaker for music and preparing rice and beans for the parents and nursery children in attendance. Over 30 parents turned up to cheer, and children from the other classes came along too, adding to the noise and excitement.

The little ones took on activities designed just for them: bottle filling, colour sorting, getting ready for school, dancing around the chair, and the ever-popular sack race. The event ran for two and a half hours of pure, joyful chaos.

Not to be outdone, Smart Junior School brought its own energy. The Director arranged a music system, sweets for the children, balloons, and buns for an eating competition that quickly became a crowd favourite. At least 30 parents showed up to support their children, and teachers pitched in every step of the way to keep things running smoothly.

Children took part in bottle filling, telling the correct number, blending, bursting balloons, an egg race, walking in boxes, getting ready for school, and of course, the eating competition. What stood out most was that every single child participated in at least one activity — no one sat on the sidelines.

Uganda has, in recent months, been confronted with two tragedies that, on the surface, appear unrelated but which speak to the same underlying failure: a system that has not yet treated the safety of young children as a non-negotiable foundation of education.
The first was on April 30th, at an Early Childhood Development center in Ggaba, Kampala, where a man posing as a parent gained entry to a nursery school and fatally stabbed four toddlers, the youngest just fifteen months old. He locked the gate behind him and carried out the attack in under seven minutes. The perpetrator, Christopher Okello Onyum, was later convicted on all counts and sentenced to death by the High Court in Kampala, in a case that stunned the nation.
The second was of an entirely different character, but no less devastating. During their return journey, a school bus returning from an educational trip to Sipi Falls overturned, killing twenty pupils and an adult. The crash prompted the government to Read More

The story of Wabulungu's new nursery section

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 01:04:57 -0700

Every big change starts small. In the case of Wabulungu Primary School in Mayuge, it started with just one child.

Until last term, Wabulungu did not have a pre-primary section at all. There was no baby class, no dedicated nursery teacher, no space set aside for the youngest learners to begin their journey. Then Wabulungu joined our ECD program, and everything began to shift.

When the school opened its very first baby class, only one child enrolled. So we got to work. We recruited teachers for the new nursery section, trained them, and equipped them with a structured curriculum designed for early learners. We provided the resources and tools the classroom needed to actually function.

What Changed

Word got around. Parents who had never had a nursery option nearby started bringing their children. Slowly, that one child became a handful, and that handful became a class. Today, Wabulungu's baby class has grown to 22 children, with two trained teachers now guiding them through their earliest days of learning. What began as a single desk and a single child is now a full, lively classroom of its own.

Wabulungu's story is one of many playing out across Mayuge. Between May and June, our field team visited 22 schools, observed 66 classrooms, and engaged 66 teachers directly, coaching them through structured sessions held once a week. We distributed 70 lesson planning booklets to...Read More

The Return of the Junior Spelling Bee

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 23:59:06 -0700

Since last Monday, our team has been on the road, travelling from district to district to bring one of our favourite traditions back to life: the District Spelling Bee.

So far, we have held competitions in Jinja, Mayuge, Tororo, Mbale, Kole, and Kiryandongo, with more stops planned before the upcountry tour wraps up this week. From there, we will head to the Kampala metropolitan region, where district competitions will continue to roll out.

This year's tour carries something we are especially excited about: the return of the Junior Spelling Bee. For the first time in a while, children aged 6 to 8 years old from all over the country are stepping up to the microphone, spelling out words with the same confidence and joy we usually see from the older children (9-12 year olds). Watching six-year-olds spell with such focus and pride is a reminder of why this work matters: reading is a skill that can and should be nurtured from the very beginning.

Of all the stops on this tour, Mayuge has been the most exciting. Mayuge is the pilot district for our ECD Teacher Training program, equipping early childhood educators with the skills to nurture young readers. We have deployed teacher coaches who offer weekly visits to each of the 20+ schools on our program. This year, these schools also benefited from our Library stocking campaign, which has put books directly into the hands of children who may never have owned one before. The bee is one of our key enrichment programs, built to ensure that every child can read, count, and thrive.

Equipping Teachers for Meaningful Learning

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 01:36:45 -0700

Last week, we kicked off our annual teacher training programme, bringing together teachers from across the country to prepare for another year of impactful learning. So far, trainings have been conducted in Mayuge, Jinja, Mbale, Tororo, Kole, and Kiryandongo, with hundreds of teachers participating.

These training sessions are part of the broader goal of ensuring that all Ugandan learners can read and write by 2030. Upon realising that this cannot be achieved when learners spend their days with unmotivated, often untrained facilitators and amid the many stereotypes surrounding the teaching profession in Uganda, we decided to anchor our programmes in ensuring that teachers are motivated and well-trained.

Each training begins with a session on values and the teacher's role in the education ecosystem. Teachers reflect on the values they embody in their daily practice and explore how these values are inevitably passed on to the children they teach. The session emphasises that teaching extends beyond academic content; it also shapes character, attitudes, and behaviour.

The second session, titled The Teacher in You, invites teachers to reflect on the most memorable teacher from their own educational journey. For some, these memories are positive; for others, they are difficult. The exercise demonstrates the lasting impact that teachers can have on the lives of their learners through seemingly small actions.

Across the training locations, teachers shared powerful stories. Some remembered teachers who offered comfort during difficult moments, such as a hug when they were upset. Others recalled teachers who celebrated their achievements, bought them a snack after they answered a question correctly, or encouraged the entire class to applaud learners who gave correct responses. Although these...Read More