We started the year with the country opening fully after two years of lockdown from the pandemic. This meant that we needed to hit the ground running.
It has been a whirlwind of activities, and we thank God for his strength and for your continual prayers and support. Below are some of the highlights from the activities we have been engaged in during this first part of the year.
Photos courtesy of the author
Uganda’s new Catholic homeschool group holds its first meeting.
We supported the launch of the first Roman Catholic Homeschoolers Group here in Kampala. It started with five families who heard about what we do and then visited our house to see what homeschooling looks like for us. Afterward, they mobilized their colleagues and decided to launch their group.
Then came our signature quarterly parents’ seminar on February 25.
It was held at African Bible University in Lubowa, and it focused on “Why Worldview Matters” in home education. The seminar targeted parents who were homeschooling their children as well as those who had the desire to start. A total of 36 parents and 34 children registered.
Parents look through curriculum, children’s books, as well as other study materials.
The children in attendance participated in devotional studies, arts, and crafts. This included educational drawing and coloring, making pencil boxes, playing games, going on a treasure hunt, and so much more. Each child came to understand that they are not alone in their homeschooling journey. The older children encouraged the young ones and discovered new friends.
We have also continued with virtual meetings with different groups across the region.
I also plan to attend homeschool conferences this year in the United States.
New Opportunities
We have an additional educational crisis to contend with here in Uganda. Public school teachers have gone on strike again, just when schools had resumed operating after two years of shutdown due to COVID-19.
All this shows that education ought to be a primary responsibility of the parent, not otherwise.
And at Homescholars Uganda Group (HUG), we are pleased to remind parents everywhere, through our different programs, of that responsibility.
Families pose for a photo at a parents conference in June.
So far, we have held five parents’ meetings across the country. Since the beginning of 2019, we have been blessed to write and publish textbooks for all 28 levels needed for primary education in Uganda (seven levels of education, with four books per level). We are now selling these books across East Africa, and at the same time, our homeschool community in Uganda has grown to over 300 families.
One of our primary goals now is setting up a resource center where this curriculum can be displayed. We hope to distribute books and other learning materials to homeschooling families, Christian schools, and universities throughout Uganda and East Africa.
We plan to make use of an on-demand printing press, which will help reduce costs by allowing us to make copies of materials on an as-needed basis. This will be a real game changer for our work in Uganda, where many families struggle financially and where shipping can be challenging and expensive.
The goal is to open the resource center in April of 2023 and reach sustainability by the end of 2025. To do this, we need an initial capital investment of $210,600.
You can watch this video to see how the printing press works.