David's travels for Rewrite the Future

by Rewrite the Future Director, David Skinner

. Children, Chickens and Income Generation in Wulungo
. Blog by David: A Journey from DRC to Rwanda
. Blog by David: Children Catching Up in Uganda

Children Catching Up in Uganda

Tove, the Chair of Rewrite the Future, and I visited the Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP) in western Uganda on 24 September 2007.

The drive out to Kasese took five hours, but after the tracks in the DRC, driving along the paved roads in Uganda was a luxury and the hotel - a privatised ex Government rest house with views over the Mountains of the Moon and the Rift Valley - was great.

We left for the ALP Programme early in the morning of 25 September. We crossed the equator on our way to the site - an every day occurrence for every body who works there and so they were quite amused by the excitement of the visitors (all of us texting our families with the news of where we were).

We visited two ALP Programmes, each with about 300 learners. Some of the learners were mothers and had their babies with them in the classroom. Each centre had four teachers, but they team taught and so each class had over 100 students. Enthusiasm from the students you meet is always infectious, though Valter, the Country Director for Save the Children in Uganda, looked a little put out to be told by one that the job he most wanted when he left school was to be Country Director for Save the Children in Uganda.

But Valter did not look half as put out as Tove did - albeit momentarily - when as a reward for opening a set of classrooms, she was presented with a rather fine billy goat. The goat looked happy. Tove recovered her composure and presented goat to the ALP income generation programme. The goat left, looking rather forlorn - visions of skipping by the side of the Norwegian fjords of Tove's home country being dashed away.

As we were leaving the school we were introduced to a three moth old baby, who had been named ‘Save' because she had been practically been born in one of the ALP classes. I excitedly reported this back to the Secretariat. John in the Secretariat immediately wrote back that I needed to explain to the mother that it was quite impossible to use the abbreviation: it was essential at all times to use the full title: ‘Save the Children'. I didn't quite dare do this.