EDUCATION REMAINS THE GREATEST GIFT ONE CAN GIVE TO A CHILD
The role of education in development is well acknowledged since a society is a reflection of the quality of education of its inhabitants. Therefore, all approaches aimed at positively impacting any society must address the issue of education. The importance of education is so significant to the extent that when the United Nations (UN) developed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, achieving universal primary education was included as the second on the list of the eight MDGs. Following the end of the SDGs in 2015, access to quality education remained at the centre of international development and was included as the fourth goal of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were developed by the UN to guide development across the globe until 2030. Actually, most of the other SDGs can be easily achieved if quality education is received by all, since quality education translates into a quality population that makes more informed and quality decisions.
The MDGs were not globally achieved and it is glaring that a lot still needs to be done if the SDGs are to be achieved. Low performance is highest in Low income countries like Uganda, and the situation is worse for the vulnerable groups such as orphans, street kids and children from impoverished homesteads that characterise most of the rural villages.
While growing up from a rural village in Rutenga Sub-county, Kanungu District (formerly Rukungiri District), Kigezi sub-region, in the south western part of Uganda, significant limitations of access to education were glaring and we had to bravely face and overcome them to attain some form of formal education. I remember at some point, the entire/ greater Rutenga Sub-county (which have since then been sub-divided into two sub-counties and a town council) had only two primary schools with a complete primary education section (Primary one to Primary Seven (P.1 – P.7)), and of these, only one of them had a centre number where pupils could sit for the national Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). This implied that on average, some pupils had to walk over 7 km to and from school daily to attain primary education. It was due to such difficulties that the Founding and Managing Director of Kigezi Home of Orphans (Mr. Katemba Julius) and I found ourselves as classmates in the same primary school despite our homes being about 10 km apart. As young boys at the time, we would always wonder why there weren’t enough schools in the region, within the reach of our homes, but definitely, we had to utilise what was available. As classmates and great friends, we decided to focus on our education with the hope of reaping the fruits of out toil in future. Luckily, we sat for the PLE together and when the results were released, we had all passed well and progressed to the same and only secondary school that was in the sub-county, where we completed our Ordinary Level Secondary Education (O’Level). After O’Level, we had to explore alternative routes beyond the district to further our education as much as possible, but we kept in touch.
Mr. Katemba later worked at education institutions in Kabale Town (the largest town within our sub-region) but continued reflecting on the challenges back home. It is against this back drop that in 2010 (while I was still at the university), he teamed up with other similar minded people and founded Kigezi Home of Orphans as a Community Based Organisation (CBO) in our greater Rutenga Sub-county, first aimed at assisting the orphans (one of the most needy groups of children in our villages) with scholastic materials, a goal that later progressed to establishment of an orphanage school in 2013. Now with an established school, despite the prevailing challenges, the beneficiaries were expanded to include all the understandably vulnerable children in the region (orphans, street kids, and children from impoverished households).
With support from well-wishers, the primary school has since then grown and is currently the best primary school within the greater Rutenga Sub-county; however, given that they largely depend on the support of well-wishes that is quite often irregular, they still face many challenges to make it sustainable, given that the beneficiaries (pupils) are unable to meet the necessary costs to offer them the required quality of education and feeding. The orphanage also relies on the support of well-wishers to sponsor the pupils that successfully complete primary education to further their studies.
Barnabas Busheshe
MA. EPM (UoN, Kenya), BSc. FOR (MUK, Uganda), NEMA-CEP in both Uganda and Kenya, Senior Environmental and Social Consultant at IBIS Consulting (based at the Nairobi Office).