Our local languages have played a vital role in shaping a culture-centric education system in East Africa. Uganda’s thematic-based curriculum, for instance, relies heavily on indigenous languages like Luganda, Kiswahili, and Runyakitara. This approach has created more inclusive and participatory classrooms.

It was a sunny Monday morning in the Kyaka II refugee settlement when we engaged primary four learners of Itambabiniga primary school. As we entered the class with warm smiles and a stack of colorful STEPi storybooks in our arms, we were determined to make learners fall in love with reading and ignite a spark of inspiration among learners.

With literacy, transformative education, and a desire to strengthen communities, and build parent and teacher resilience, front and centre, Nelson Mandela University in South Africa recently signed an agreement with Utopia Foundation and Squaring the Education Pyramid Institute (STEPi) to help transform education and elevate the importance of early childhood development.

Joy is a champion in her community. She is the Miss Popularity Youth+ 2022 award winner, an award dedicated to youths living with HIV/AIDS who have overcome the shame and ridicule often associated with people who receive that diagnosis, and how they have turned their diagnosis into positive social change in their communities. She joined one of our STEPi Coordinators in Uganda on a roadtrip promoting peer to peer interaction about literacy, reading, education and appropriate relationships to encourage a growth mindset for the children to ensure academic excellence.

The STEPi Coordinators and Ambassadors in Uganda embarked on a journey to help improve the relationships between parents and children, as well as the relationships between parents and teachers. Five schools in different districts of Uganda were approached by the Coordinators and their teams, including Uplift Ambassadors, to host positive parenting workshops, introduce and encourage literacy and reading programs in the different communities and encourage positive parent-teacher conversations.

Esther reads the word ‘mark’ as ‘make’. And Doreen reads, ‘curious’ as ‘carious’. The two courageous girls are among the best readers at Ibanda Primary school in the Kikuube district of mid-western Uganda. They can read but mechanically for their colleagues, with much confidence and love although they cannot explain the meaning of most of the words they can read. Read more about how our community engagement coordinator in Uganda is inspiring children to enjoy story books while creating vocabulary banks.

It is important for us to note that we do not teach learning. We inspire learning. We inspire a positive virtue in every child called curiosity; the strong desire to want to learn. This article is created to help all those who care for and teach children to be aware of and support children’s rights in relation to education as we continue in our quest to raise children who care and contribute to their communities.

Author and songwriter Dennis Warner visited South Africa for 3 weeks in March 2023. He travelled across South Africa visiting various under-resourced communities across Gauteng and the Western Cape to sing his song, Beads on One String, which has been turned into a book and published by STEPi. The children loved his song and enjoyed his visit; Dennis would sing the song with them and the children would follow along with the words and the beautiful pictures in the book.