Coronavirus hasn’t just stopped the educational progress of Ugandan kids– it has highlighted how difficult it is for them to keep up with all the educational innovations available on and offline to schoolchildren in America and elsewhere. With 100 plus students per teacher, and with no computers, WiFi, or often even electricity in their villages, education has always been a struggle. At Student Change Makers, we’re trying to bridge that gap. We are students helping students. As we became more aware of the inequities children face around the world, we decided to do something by starting to partner with our friends at Teach for Uganda. Some day we hope to sponsor enough villages to expand to other countries. We believe, as students, that we can and must be part of building a fairer tomorrow – starting today.We partner with other students in the US to sponsor schools in villages in Uganda. Our sponsorships pay for tablets, portable hotspots, and charging stations in Ugandan schools. This in turn allows children in Uganda to access online learning resources, such as Khan Academy, PBS Kids, National Geographic, local Ugandan educational content, etc. -- both today and after the pandemic. The technology permits the Teach for Uganda Fellows (who we partner with and who are placed in these villages) to break their cohorts of 100 plus students into smaller learning pods. In this way, students can review content in one cohort as the Fellow focuses on new lessons with another cohort.
Something we didn’t expect? Student Change Makers is helping the whole village! When we first began this project we were just thinking about other youth like ourselves, and wondering how they were learning. But it turns out that bringing Wi-Fi and an electric charging station to a village where there isn’t any is a pretty big deal! All of a sudden, mothers and grandmothers can charge their phones to sell their handmade products at market or consult with a regional health center. Fathers and Grandfathers have been using Wi-Fi access to learn new skills or better price their crops. It’s been really eye-opening.
But it’s not just about providing indispensable equipment; it’s also about making lasting connections. We believe that the more we can learn about each other, starting as students, in our interconnected but very different world, the more we can be better citizens and help make things better for the future. Each kid who sponsors a school will create a short video talking about their lives in the US. Their counterparts in Uganda will respond with videos of their own. This begins an exchange that will take place at least once a month for the minimum year of your commitment as a Student Change Maker Ambassador, with topics provided by us and facilitated by the Fellows at Teach for Uganda. Kids in the US know little of what life is really like in Uganda; kids in Uganda are equally unaware of real life for kids in the US. Student Change Makers will allow for a meaningful and (we hope) long-lasting exchange.
