Update on DEKI Schools

Shauna shared with us about what is happening at the two primary schools in Uganda that DEKI started.  These two schools are to bringing quality education to the children in Uganda.  

DEKI's vision is to TRANSFORM Northern Uganda through access to sustainable quality education.  There are three ways that they are doing to give these children quality education.  How they are doing this is by 1) reducing distance, 2) quality education, and 3) changing mindsets.  May of these students had to travel far on foot to get to a school for education, putting schools closer to their areas, makes it easier for them to get a good quality education with high quality teachers.  NAHLA is the first school built six years ago and the second school is Hayden Primary which opened in 2023.   They did hire a new country Director to help work between the two schools.

 

During COVID, the schools had to shut down and did not open up until 2022.  At the time before COVID, they had good attendance, but when they reopened attendance was down.  This is the reason for hiring a Country Director.  Shauna had known the person they hired for sometime and he is very well qualified for the position.  The gentleman's name is Francis Ndagize.  In 2024 Francis started a back to school campaign to help get the attendance up.  Francis went to churches, community activities and talked about the two schools which helped bring attendance up.  NAHLA currently has 400 students.  NAHLA had to hire a new head teacher and it has 16 teachers to teach the students.  They also have started a PTA at NAHLA.  At one of the meetings the parents were concerned about the pay for the teachers and thought they should have a raise.  Yes, the teachers did get a raise.

 

The second school, Hayden Primary, opened in 2023 and currently has 350+ children enrolled with 15 teachers.  They use the Government Curriculum.  It cost about $1500 per year for a student.  They would like to add more courses to the current curriculum.  They would like to start some new programs such as:  Administrator training, teacher training, and girls mentorship.  They would like to implement a strategic plan sot that all policies could be formalized, decentralize the leadership, be able to deepen their community involvement as well as get the government more involved in these schools,  and expand their programming.