Miss-Delectable
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http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/20/457974
Charity begins at home is an age-old saying. Three summers ago in 2002, after returning from a trip to Kenya and Uganda, I casually told two fellow educators of the great needs for more educational resources for deaf and blind children in Africa.
There had to be something that could be done about it, we all agreed. A few weeks later, the rough idea took shape to form the International Resources for Education of African Deaf and Blind Children (I Read ABC). It was a completely foreign territory for all of us as the new charity went through the slow registration process. And although we believed in what we were doing, it was sheer hard work.
However, for Betty Napeyok Volla, a primary school teacher in Moroto, the call this summer from Canada was like “winning the lottery”. She was reacting to the news that she is one of three successful recipients of the first I Read ABC Scholarship toward a B.ED in Special Needs Education at Kyambogo University.
“This is a great honour to my community, but most of all to the blind children that I teach. I will be a better teacher because of the scholarship,” she told Edith Mbabazi, lecturer at Kyambogo and country coordinator for I Read ABC. I Read ABC board of directors had sat in the summer to select the final successful candidates from a shortlist of five candidates provided by Kyambogo University.
The scholarship provides tuition, lodging and board and all fees related to the programme. “We specifically targeted candidates from upcountry because they will go back to teach in their home districts,” said Mbabazi about the process.
Napeyok, together with the other awardees, Joyce Norah Akwi and Vincent Ngura reported for classes at Kyambogo University in Kampala in the first week of September 2005. As part of the awards, the teachers are expected to work at the I Read ABC Learning Centre at Kyambogo University. Since those early days in the summer of 2002, I Read ABC has quickly established itself as a charity in many Canadian schools, raising $15,000 last year.
In collaboration with Kyambogo University, I Read ABC is planning to build a learning centre for deaf and blind that will allow teacher-candidates in special education to work with the children.
At the signing ceremony to commission the project in March this year, Kyambogo Vice Chancellor, Professor Lutaalo Bbosa, said that the centre will be unique because it will enable teachers to learn firsthand how to teach deaf and blind children.
“Oftentimes, we have to send them to faraway centres for deaf and blind, but in this case, the teachers-in-training will have daily interactions with the special needs student population,” he said. Kyambogo has donated the land for the new centre.
Meanwhile, I Read ABC will be looking for funding for the project from the Canadian International Development Agency, private donors, corporate donors and school communities across Canada. We are working on a major fundraising initiative that will involve children across Canada.
The I Read For Africa Challenge is slated for February 2006. The read-a-thon will invite Canadian children to get family and friends to sponsor them to read as many books as possible.
The funds raised will go toward the I Read ABC Learning Centre at Kyambogo University. Meanwhile, I Read ABC board is already hard at work courting universities in Canada to establish an exchange programme that will see Canadian teachers work in Uganda and allow Uganda teachers to upgrade in Canada.
Other projects are also beckoning in other African countries. And while it is full steam ahead, it sometimes feels like mission impossible, but that is exactly how it felt that summer in 2002.
In fact, as the commitment gets bigger, the lesson the volunteers at I Read ABC are very quickly learning is that they have to work even harder. However, the greatest joy is in seeing that hard work translated into tangible progress on the ground.
As for the three successful recipients of I Read ABC scholarships, the most important work is to get good grades. The rest has been taken care of.
Charity begins at home is an age-old saying. Three summers ago in 2002, after returning from a trip to Kenya and Uganda, I casually told two fellow educators of the great needs for more educational resources for deaf and blind children in Africa.
There had to be something that could be done about it, we all agreed. A few weeks later, the rough idea took shape to form the International Resources for Education of African Deaf and Blind Children (I Read ABC). It was a completely foreign territory for all of us as the new charity went through the slow registration process. And although we believed in what we were doing, it was sheer hard work.
However, for Betty Napeyok Volla, a primary school teacher in Moroto, the call this summer from Canada was like “winning the lottery”. She was reacting to the news that she is one of three successful recipients of the first I Read ABC Scholarship toward a B.ED in Special Needs Education at Kyambogo University.
“This is a great honour to my community, but most of all to the blind children that I teach. I will be a better teacher because of the scholarship,” she told Edith Mbabazi, lecturer at Kyambogo and country coordinator for I Read ABC. I Read ABC board of directors had sat in the summer to select the final successful candidates from a shortlist of five candidates provided by Kyambogo University.
The scholarship provides tuition, lodging and board and all fees related to the programme. “We specifically targeted candidates from upcountry because they will go back to teach in their home districts,” said Mbabazi about the process.
Napeyok, together with the other awardees, Joyce Norah Akwi and Vincent Ngura reported for classes at Kyambogo University in Kampala in the first week of September 2005. As part of the awards, the teachers are expected to work at the I Read ABC Learning Centre at Kyambogo University. Since those early days in the summer of 2002, I Read ABC has quickly established itself as a charity in many Canadian schools, raising $15,000 last year.
In collaboration with Kyambogo University, I Read ABC is planning to build a learning centre for deaf and blind that will allow teacher-candidates in special education to work with the children.
At the signing ceremony to commission the project in March this year, Kyambogo Vice Chancellor, Professor Lutaalo Bbosa, said that the centre will be unique because it will enable teachers to learn firsthand how to teach deaf and blind children.
“Oftentimes, we have to send them to faraway centres for deaf and blind, but in this case, the teachers-in-training will have daily interactions with the special needs student population,” he said. Kyambogo has donated the land for the new centre.
Meanwhile, I Read ABC will be looking for funding for the project from the Canadian International Development Agency, private donors, corporate donors and school communities across Canada. We are working on a major fundraising initiative that will involve children across Canada.
The I Read For Africa Challenge is slated for February 2006. The read-a-thon will invite Canadian children to get family and friends to sponsor them to read as many books as possible.
The funds raised will go toward the I Read ABC Learning Centre at Kyambogo University. Meanwhile, I Read ABC board is already hard at work courting universities in Canada to establish an exchange programme that will see Canadian teachers work in Uganda and allow Uganda teachers to upgrade in Canada.
Other projects are also beckoning in other African countries. And while it is full steam ahead, it sometimes feels like mission impossible, but that is exactly how it felt that summer in 2002.
In fact, as the commitment gets bigger, the lesson the volunteers at I Read ABC are very quickly learning is that they have to work even harder. However, the greatest joy is in seeing that hard work translated into tangible progress on the ground.
As for the three successful recipients of I Read ABC scholarships, the most important work is to get good grades. The rest has been taken care of.