Growing Education

Karamoja is a particularly poor and backward region in north-eastern Uganda. It is estimated that more than half a million people living there are suffering from hunger (about 40% of the population), with more than 90,000 children and 9,500 pregnant or lactating women in acute malnutrition.

The statistics in Karamoja are also particularly worrying in the field of education/schooling: in the Moroto district, a literacy rate of 13% is reported, with 80% of enrolled children dropping out of primary school before its completion.

Because of the very close correlation between the presence of food at school and school attendance/ dropout, it becomes a key factor to guarantee the best possible conditions for the daily school meal - identified as a positive factor even by those families who, due to culture and poverty of means, struggle to recognise the importance of school for their children and risk replicating the circle of exclusion.

Our commitment

For years, thanks to the invaluable work of the Associazione Gruppi ‘Insieme si Può... ’, we have been committed to fighting hunger in Karamoja and ensuring school attendance for the children living there. By combining these two objectives, projects for the development of school gardens and the provision of richer and healthier school meals are being implemented in several schools in Moroto.

The project launched in January 2024 in at least 6 schools in Moroto is making it possible to:

• Train pupils, teachers, parents and the community on agroforestry techniques and good practices;
• Distribute agricultural tools, seedlings and seeds to schools and communities to develop school and community gardens;
• Repair school rainwater harvesting systems to ensure access to a water source;
• Initiate awareness-raising on the importance of a healthy and balanced diet (possible thanks to what is grown) with the support of a nutritionist, so that meals eaten at school and at home no longer consist solely of beans and polenta/rice (as is the custom in the region);
• Forming and accompanying community-based savings groups, which ensure the sustainability of the intervention by allowing parents and communities to save what they earn from the proceeds of the gardens and reinvest it in the education and basic needs of their children and families.

This project will boost school attendance of Karimojon children and improve and enrich the diet of local schools and communities, ensuring greater self-sufficiency and food security.

(The project is also active in the current year)