Sights and sounds from Nakisajja Primary School earlier today.

Dear friends, Yesterday, 17 September 2026, our volunteer training came to an end, and the end was an emotional one. Two of the volunteers asked to speak, one of them being Betty, who is our volunteer coordinator. Betty thanked the ELI team for thinking about their community, and for choosing, out of all the problems we could have picked, this one: children going through their own school without ever learning to read or write. She reminded the volunteers that the community is now their responsibility, and she asked them not to disappoint it. They would have to work together and support one another, she said, for the programme to succeed in their community. The second volunteer cried as she spoke. Over these three days, she said, the group had become family, and she asked that they stay family now that they know one another, and work as one. She said more than I can write here, enough to make me teary myself. As I told you yesterday, the people we chose for this work are the right ones. They care about the children around them, and they understand what it costs a child to leave school unable to read. Some of them spoke about children they know who dropped out, and they diagnosed it right. The child could not read, so could not follow what the teacher wrote on the blackboard or answer when asked. It builds and builds until the child starts to hate school. And in a place where education is not yet seen as a matter of survival, walking away from it becomes the easy thing to do. We finished the training strong, fresh commitments from the volunteers to go back into their villages as Changemakers who champion education. I was honest with them about how we raised the money for this training, and I told them something they did not know, that they have people all over the world cheering them on. I explained that I write about them and their work here, both to raise what we need to keep going and to show others the scale of the reading crisis in this country and how they can help, so that more people can find their own way to act where they live. You should have seen what it meant to them to learn there are people they don’t know rooting for them. Our volunteers know what they are up against. This problem runs across the whole country, and across much of the world, and they are choosing to fight the monster anyway, stakes and all. That makes me so proud, grateful too. They did not leave empty-handed. We handed over the materials they will use in the camps. Some were charts on which they will draw and reuse for many months to teach one group of children after another. They also received cardboards for making letter cards and word cards, markers to write them, ELI notebooks for planning their lessons and keeping their own thoughts, ELI manuals, and pens. We gave each of them an apron too, so they have an identity while working out in the community. The money we raised was not enough to get tote bags for their materials, the t-shirts, or the IDs we wanted for them, and I told them as much. I am confident that this is something we will sort out soon. We will keep finding ways to keep them motivated, even without pay. Paying volunteers is not something an organisation like ELI can sustain, and it is not in long term plans. They know this. We were clear about it from the day we recruited them, and they chose to be here anyway. So we now have our first cohort of ELI volunteers, trained and ready for the community. They will go back to their community, work with head teachers to identify the children who have been left behind, group them and start teaching them to read, one sound and one word at a time. This is where the work begins, and I could not be handing it to better people. Thank you for following this work. Please follow @EqualizeEduc. #EqualizingEducation

Hi friends, Yesterday we continued with our volunteer training, and I could not be more grateful, or more proud, of these people. Day two took us deeper into the actual craft of teaching a child to read. We built word webs on the floor using chalk, starting from one letter and branching it out, into ma, me, mi, mo, mu, then on into whole words like mango, mother, money, and matoke. Our volunteers saw for themselves how one letter opens into dozens of words. We arranged cut-out word cards on the ground until the words became sentences, the helmet is under the chair, the book is on top of the black chair. Our volunteers learned the exact steps they will soon take the children in their communities through. They practised on the floor, on their knees, on scraps of cardboard taped to the wall, using whatever was available. This is the reality of this work, and I promise, not one of them flinched at it. They are enjoying this a little more than I first imagined. What stays with me is not the chalk or the word cards we built; it is these wonderful people. Six members of the community who could be doing a hundred other things chose to spend three days learning how to give a child something no one can ever take back. Yesterday was market day in our area but they were at the training venue as early as 7:40 AM. We knew how important the market day is and we moved through the day’s activities faster and finished just after 3:30 PM so they could go catch the market. To me, this means the world, because they are showing us that this work is as important as anything else they do in their day to day life, and they could not be more right. This country needs such community-driven solutions to the problems we have, people who decide for themselves that teaching a child to read is worth giving up whatever market day would have meant for them. Today is the final day, and we start with the magic e component. This is where we look at the letter E and the neat little trick it pulls when it is at the end of a word. In such words, the e makes no sound of its own, but it reaches back over the consonant and tells the vowel to say its name, which is why mat turns into mate, hop into hope, cap into cape, kit into kite, mad into made, rat into rate. From there we will go into assessments, where we’ll learn how to measure the reading level each child starts at before the camp begins, and how much that child has grown by the end of the camp. Near the end of the day, we also work through the more practical thing of how the literacy camps will work out in the community, and how to work hand in hand with the schools. We’ll also give out material they’ll use to start this work. If you have followed us from the start, you know what we are after. We want to stir whole communities into action against a learning crisis that keeps swallowing this country's children while barely making the news. Today I am asking you to join us. Be part of this special thing we are building. And to everyone who has supported us in any way, thank you. You are the reason we keep going. If you are new here, follow our work @EqualizeEduc, and visit our website to see more of what we do and how we do it. #EqualizingEducation

Hi friends, Today we began training the volunteers who will run our literacy camps, and I am happy to tell you we have found the right people for this work. These are people who have chosen to be part of a solution to the learning crisis that is sinking this country without the attention it deserves. Day one of three ran from 9AM to 4PM, and despite a few challenges here and there, it went well. The volunteers stayed active and eager the whole day. Women make up 80% of our volunteers. We did not plan it that way, but from my own experience, and from all the evidence I have seen, work like this in rural communities moves best when women lead it. The ELI team itself is 75% women, volunteers included, and both our Head of Literacy and our Volunteer Coordinator are women. Nine months in, and the reason this has worked so far is that we understood the power of women early, and brought them into it from the start. When these three days are done, these same women and man will walk back into their villages and teach children to read and write. And after this first day, I can confidently say that I would not want anyone else doing it. Follow @EqualizeEduc. #EqualizingEducation

When we started this work, the goal was to lay out the challenge plainly, show how it touches every one of us as Ugandans, and bring on board people willing to do something about it with us. We wanted it to grow into something that champions local philanthropy, with friends, the people I talk to on social media, and others I have never even met, choosing to support the work regularly. The learning crisis we are in is slowly running this country into the ground. Children move through school without actually learning, and the problem starts in the foundational classes, where the building blocks of literacy and numeracy are either rushed through by overstretched, demotivated teachers or skipped altogether. The result is children in P5, P6 and even P7 who cannot read a P2 level story. Uwezo's 2024 assessment found that only about one in ten P3 pupils can read and understand a P2 story, and the numbers have been getting worse rather than better. The proportion of P7 pupils across the country unable to read a simple English story has climbed to almost a quarter. So we have children finishing more than seven years of school without the foundational literacy and numeracy that everything else in life today depends on. A child who cannot read cannot follow the teacher, cannot understand an exam question, cannot teach themselves anything later in life. The learning gap opens early and then follows our children for life. Equal Learn Initiative (@EqualizeEduc) exists to close that gap. We train volunteers from within the community to run literacy camps that help each child at the level they are actually at, not the level the curriculum assumes, and we set up reading clubs that keep children reading long after a lesson ends. We teach children first in the language they already think in, then use that footing to take them into English and the rest of their schooling. It is community-owned by design, so the work takes root and outlasts any one of us. I am glad to share that through these posts I make, two people have now committed to supporting our work every month. That may sound small, but in an economy this tough, getting someone to give regularly, not once but month after month, is one of the hardest and most meaningful things you can ask of a person. It tells me the idea is reaching the right people, that local philanthropy for our own children is possible. So, I am still inviting you all to join us in this important work. If you have been looking for a local organisation to support each month, consider us. You can learn more about what we do and how we do it on our website, and if you would rather have a conversation with me directly, we can even set up a phone call and have a proper chat about what motivates this work and how we got here. If you would like to give, you can use MTN MoMoPay with our code 32607875, or send to our bank, Centenary Bank, Lyantonde Branch, Equal Learn Initiative Uganda Limited, account 3100125309. If you are outside Uganda, the simplest way is via Wise at wise.com, sent to the same account. Every contribution moves a child closer to reading, and even sharing this post does real work. #EqualizingEducation

What happened when I brought digital storybooks into a rural classroom. A few weeks ago, I took my laptop into one of the schools we work with, opened a story from NABU on the screen, and let the children read. NABU (@readwithnabu) is a nonprofit that develops children's literature in African languages and makes it available as free digital readers. I had spent time on their platform and even had conversations with the NABU team in the weeks before. So I wanted to see how it would work with our children in the schools. It was the first time these children had read books on a digital device, and they were fascinated. I usually avoid taking my computer into class, since I always assumed the machine would be a distraction. It was actually the opposite because their attention went to the stories rather than the device. In fact, they were so absorbed in the reading that they did not want the session to end. We read one story, Ekirooto Kya Bena. On each page of the book, there was a sentence in the local language, an illustration, and then the same sentence in English directly below it. The children crowded in around the screen, and what they enjoyed most was having both languages together. One child would read the English version and another the Luganda. A child who had barely spoken in the reading sessions before was suddenly reading aloud for the others. What fascinated me about NABU's approach is how the books are designed. The local language sentence comes first, an illustration shows what is happening, and the English follows saying the same thing. The illustration gives the child an image to attach the words to, which helps them understand the story and remember it. The mother tongue works as a bridge rather than a separate track that begins and ends on its own. A child reads what they already know, sees it in the picture, then meets the English on the same page with the meaning already in hand. We think about literacy the same way at Equal Learn Initiative (@EqualizeEduc). We teach children to read in their own language first because it works, then use that foundation to move them into the rest of their learning. Everything I have been learning in recent months confirms the idea that children learn best in the language they already think in. Their first language is the thing that makes the second one possible, never the obstacle. A child who meets new ideas only in English, before they have enough English to grasp them, loses the learning, and assessments will often mistake that for a child failing to keep up. What is at stake here is bigger than one school. The children in our schools today belong to the largest generation this continent has ever raised, and by the middle of this century, close to one in three of the world's young people will be African. Whether that turns into an opportunity or a burden comes down to whether these children can read and think for themselves. We cannot accept a future where Uganda's children are left behind while the rest of the world reads on. That afternoon showed me one part of the answer. We will keep running our book drives and collecting physical storybooks for these classrooms, because a printed book in a child's hands still does something a screen cannot. A laptop or a shared tablet, though, gives a child access to hundreds of stories where a shelf only gives access to ten, and gives them those stories in the languages they actually speak. Printed books for the intimacy and the ownership, digital readers for the variety. The two should belong together rather than one replacing the other. If you want to see what these books look like, the collection is worth exploring yourself. The Luganda and Runyankore storybooks are genuinely good, well-written and age-appropriate, which is exactly what our reading clubs need. You can visit read.nabu.org, choose the language you want, and see the books available. I would recommend it to any school club working with early graders, or to anyone helping their own children read better. #MelvinDiary

Those of us who finished school, found jobs, and built decent lives owe something to the schools we left behind. A principal running two of the best schools in Kampala just showed what that kind of responsibility looks like in practical terms.

A child can read every word and still understand nothing. Our schools are testing children in a language they are still learning then recording what they cannot say as what they do not know. This article shows why our school system must rethink assessment.

The first issue of the @EqualizeEduc newsletter sends out tomorrow morning at 9 AM. I am genuinely excited about this. It is a monthly message written for the people who first believed in this work, some of whom stepped in with support and encouragement long before there was anything to show for it. Starting this work has changed my life in more ways than I expected. The growth over these past seven months has been immense, and there is something honestly refreshing about watching a small thing take root out of almost nothing. Even more refreshing is seeing people, many of whom I have never met in person, who believe in this work and think it is something our society genuinely needs. I have been inspired by that more than I can properly say. In Issue 01, you will read about: The demographic reality Uganda and the rest of Africa are walking into, and why literacy is the one thing that decides whether that reality becomes a strength or a burden. The groundwork of the past seven months behind ELI, and why doing the slow, unglamorous work first is the only way this kind of thing lasts. Our reading clubs, now running in five schools with 124 children, and the volunteers we have identified to run the literacy camps once we finish raising the training funds. Why Lyantonde, of all the districts in Uganda, is where this work has to begin. There is a painful history behind that answer, and it deserves to be told properly. And where we go from here. I hope you enjoy reading our first issue. #EqualizingEducation

Yesterday I watched a ten-year-old boy named Brian in Primary 4 try to read the word “mother.” He has been in school for a little over four years. Four years of walking through the same gate every morning, four years of being promoted to the next grade, four years of teachers assuming someone before them had taught him the basics. Nobody actually had. He looked at the word and recognised the first syllable. Then he guessed. He said “Monday.” That guess tells you everything you need to know about his school journey. Brian has learned that words starting with “m” are probably “Monday” or “maize” or “morning” because those are the words he hears most often in class. He has built an entire survival system around guessing, because nobody ever went back and taught him how letters become sounds and sounds become words and words become sentences that mean something. Brian is not as slow as you might assume. He is, in fact, one of the sharper children I have met in this community. He figured out how to get through four years of school without being able to read by watching the other children, copying from the board, and memorising what the teacher said out loud. This takes a specific kind of intelligence, the kind that learns every rule of a game it was never properly invited to play. It also breaks my heart, because all of this intelligence has been spent on hiding instead of learning. There are millions of children like Brian in Uganda right now. Research by Uwezo found that only one in ten P3 children can read a P2-level story. Nine out of ten are doing some version of what Brian does every day: guessing, copying, pretending, and at the end of term, getting promoted to the next grade where the guessing gets harder and the learning gap gets wider. We are hoping Brian will be joining our literacy camps at Nakisajja, where we go back to the very basics he missed, the letter sounds, the syllables, the building blocks that make the difference between guessing at a word and actually reading it. The camps run outdoors, under the trees, away from the classroom that already taught him he could not keep up. In these camps, children learn through songs and games and other fun activities, in small groups led by trained volunteers from their own villages, people who know them by name, who follow up at home when a child stops coming, and who will keep doing this work for years because they live where these children live. But we cannot open those camps until we have trained those volunteers. And that is where we need your help. We are raising money right now to make that training happen. Five volunteers. Three days. Two experienced trainers. A total cost of UGX 2,177,000, roughly $589. That is the budget standing between Brian and his first properly read word. If you feel moved to be part of what we are building, reach out and I will walk you through how the work is done, where the money goes, and what your contribution would mean for children like Brian. You can also visit equallearninitiative.org to learn more about Equal Learn Initiative and how we approach this work. Every contribution moves this work forward, and even sharing this post with others makes a genuine difference. For any enquiries, write to us here or send an email to [email protected]. #EqualizingEducation

There was a time when the world felt wide open with possibility. When the distance between a child and their dream seemed like something effort could close. That feeling was genuine and many people built their lives on it. Something has curdled since then. The systems that were supposed to make that happen have since broken. Leaders race to take what they can, as though a deadline is approaching that only they can see. People are exhausted in the specific way that comes not from hard work but from watching the same betrayal repeat itself, year after year, with different faces and the same hands. And in the middle of all this, there are children in classrooms, in communities, still having the kind of hope that has not yet learned to protect itself. They have not given up. Nobody told them to yet. But they are growing up without the guidance and the resources that hope alone cannot substitute for. If we let this generation of children grow up without the guidance and opportunities they deserve, without the support that turns potential into something real, the loss will be on us. We will have failed them. The responsibility is ours, and we cannot wait for government systems to fix themselves. Every child, wherever they are, deserves access to what they need to achieve their potential. My friends and I are building something to give underserved children a chance through @EqualizeEduc. We work with rural communities on foundational literacy because everything else in a child’s education begins there. A child who can read can follow the lesson, understand the exam question, and stay curious long enough to keep going. Also, better literacy produces better learning outcomes, better learning outcomes produce children who stay in school and enjoy it, and children who stay in school and enjoy it grow into the kind of adults every country needs. That includes thoughtful citizens, careful thinkers, and leaders who understand the weight of the office they hold. You can read more about how the work is done on our website. But for this work to grow, and for it to eventually spread beyond one community, we need more of you to be part of it. We cannot keep waiting for the rest of the world to fund solutions to problems that are ours to solve. International support has done meaningful things for this country, and I am not against it. But when Ugandan children are learning below grade level, when schools have just four storybooks, when foundational education has collapsed in the rural schools most of us came from, the first hands on the problem should be ours. So I am asking you, my Ugandan friends, to make ELI the first local organisation you choose to support regularly. It doesn’t have to be the biggest gift you have ever given, just a monthly contribution that fits into your life without breaking it. What matters is the consistency, and the fact that it is coming from us, for us. In return, we will keep you close to the work. Regular updates on what is happening in the schools, what your contribution is doing, and honest accounts of what we are learning, what is working, and what is not. We will make sure you always know how your money was spent. If you want to understand the work more deeply before you commit, I am happy to have that conversation. Drop a comment or send me a direct message and I will be in touch.