Among the struggles that Ugandan families face, illiteracy is one that is on the minds of many today. Due to limited resources and extreme poverty, as well as insufficient learning materials, textbooks, and infrastructure to sustain a rigorous educational system, the challenge to increase literacy rates is significantly threatened for our students in Africa. Yet determined to help, people in North Alabama rose to face the test!
Moved by the challenge of illiteracy due to limited resources and learning materials, our partner Daystar Church issued an appeal to businesses, other churches, schools, and individuals in Alabama to collect as many books as possible to be sent to Uganda via a large shipping container. The grade levels for the books requested were preschool through eighth grade. Bibles were also collected.
Once the project was complete, over 12,000 books had been collected from all genres and age levels. Full classroom sets of novels were donated as well as teacher editions and textbook collections. In America, many people came together to sort, count, package, and load the books onto the shipping container. In Uganda, people came together to unload the books, tag them according to reading level, and evenly distribute the books between three different schools!
Currently, House of Hope school in Mbarara has new bookshelves and a fully functioning library for their primary school. Any day now, the next library is expected to be set up at Victorious Primary School in Ibanda. The third library is dedicated to Lighthouse Primary School at Daystar Village in Kasese once the new school is established! We are excited to have this opportunity to foster improved vocabulary and communication skills, develop their sense of community and accomplishment and grow the imaginations of these brilliant scholars.
