After 7 long months of schools being closed, the Ugandan government has finally re-opened all classes! Currently over 1300 students have returned to school, which is about 65% of our attendance before the first lockdown in early 2020.
Our schools have been open off and on during the last 2 years, but the schools were only partially opened in an attempt to slow the spread. Eventually when the COVID-19 Delta variant hit last June, the country went back into lockdown for a little over a month. When they re-opened, almost everything was opened except schools because reportedly the schools had been the biggest source of COVID spreading in the country.
One of the major problems with schools being shut down for so long has been that students lose interest in finishing their education. Many leave for the cities to go and get jobs, others will become married at a very young age. Kids losing interest in school means falling into unhealthy life choices, and ultimately repeating the cycle of poverty we aim to break.
We are making follow up inquiries to each of the families who have students who have not returned yet in order to encourage them to come back and finish their education. We ask that you will join us in praying for our students to continue to return to campus.
We have been preparing to re-open our schools for months now, including hiring many teachers and staff members, building housing blocks for our teaching staff, and filing all of the legal documentation the government has required. We are so thankful for the ability to re-open our schools to our students once again. We could not have done this without the support of so many of our partners! Thank you!