Uganda has one of the biggest refugee populations in the world, with more than 1.2million refugees (the majority from South Sudan) seeking refuge in Uganda. Many of the refugee settlements are within a few hours drive from Gulu and this year we have partnered with another NGO (ZOA International) to begin a pilot project in one of the settlements. Two of our READ for Life trainers recently travelled to one of the largest refugee settlements where they visited three schools to test children’s reading levels and then train teachers from two of the schools (one school will be a control school).
Although our team returned quite discouraged from the reading results, I’m pretty excited! Third grade children could barely read one word; one school had grade 3 reading levels at 0 words per minute whilst in another the average was 1.1 words read in one minute. You could say that after three years of education, these children were illiterate.
I’m really excited about this project!
I’m excited that we have an opportunity to work with refugees.
I’m excited that although currently the children cannot read, I am completely confident they will make a lot of progress this year!
I’m excited that these teachers will be learning new teaching methods that will change the face of education for refugee children.
I’m excited that we can visit and mentor the teachers throughout the year.
I’m excited about seeing the results at the end of the year!
And I’m excited about the future possibilities from this project.
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 
Yes I agree how exciting! And I believe it willl bring a sense of hope for the kids and teachers too 🙂