Equal Learn Initiative Uganda

Supporting rural children to learn to read & stay in school. Literacy camps, reading clubs, volunteer training & menstrual health. Community-led. Sustainable.

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Walk into a Primary Five classroom in a rural school in Uganda and you will likely find children who cannot read a simple sentence. This is not because they are absent or inattentive. Many of them have been in school for years. The problem is that they missed the foundational steps in their first years of school, and the system promoted them anyway.

National assessments put numbers to what teachers already know. Uwezo found that only 3 out of 10 Primary Three children in Uganda can read a Primary Two level story. NAPE data shows that many learners in upper primary cannot interpret basic written sentences, which means they cannot follow instructions, cannot understand exam questions, and cannot keep up in any subject, not just English.

Learning should look different. A child who completes Primary Three should be able to read a short story, understand what it says, and retell it in their own words. That one skill carries them through mathematics, science, social studies, and every other subject that depends on reading to make sense of written questions and instructions. Without it, school becomes a place where children sit for years without learning.

At Equal Learn Initiative, we address this directly. We run literacy camps in rural schools in Lyantonde District. We begin by assessing each child to find their actual reading level, then place them in small groups at Level 1, 2, or 3.

Volunteers work with them daily using structured guides and simple activities. Children who arrive unable to read a single word begin to catch up within two weeks. After camps end, reading clubs in schools keep children practicing so the progress holds.

The gap is real, and it is not inevitable. When children are assessed at their actual reading level, placed in a group that matches where they are, and supported daily by a trained volunteer with the right tools, they catch up. Within two weeks of joining a literacy camp, children who could not read a single word begin reading short words on their own.

That is not a promise. It is what we have seen in all the communities where we have worked, and it is why we are doing everything possible to bring this approach to as many rural schools as possible.

Join the work, get in touch today.

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

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 https://t.co/KdmvK7xqUy, sent to the same account. Every contribution moves a child closer to reading, and even sharing this post does real work. #EqualizingEducation

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Our volunteers are ready, and they could not be more excited. From the 15th to the 17th of September, they begin their Teaching at the Right Level training, and it marks the start of the work in their community.

Teaching at the Right Level, or TaRL, is a globally recognised approach that does the one thing conventional schooling so often fails to do. Instead of teaching children according to their class or age, it meets each child at the level they have actually reached and moves them forward from there. A P5 child who cannot yet read is taught as the reader they are today, not the P5 pupil the curriculum assumes, and that single shift is what turns a struggling learner into a reading one. It is the heart of how we work at Equal Learn Initiative.

The people going through this training are not outsiders. They are members of the community, some retired teachers, who agreed to give their time to help close the learning gaps among their own children. We are bringing a TaRL expert into our rural community to train these good people, so that they can advance education and learning where they live long after we are gone.

Today, we recognise them as our heroes for accepting the challenge. The question we leave you with is simple. Will you accept the challenge too, and support this work? #EqualizingEducation

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Today the world marked sixty years of International Literacy Day, and this year’s theme, “Literacy for people, the planet and prosperity,” connects reading to almost everything a person needs to build a good life. It is a fitting theme, because literacy has never really been about books alone. It is how a farmer reads the instructions on a bag of seed, how a mother understands a prescription, how a young voter weighs a promise before believing it etc.

Today, we are reminded that the gap is still wide. UNESCO estimates that four in ten children in the world are not reaching minimum reading proficiency, and here at home in Uganda, only about one in ten of our Primary Three pupils able to read a simple story. At Equal Learn Initiative we spend our days closing that gap one child at a time, training people from the community to teach children to read in the language they already think in. Sixty years into this global day, the work is far from finished, which is exactly why we keep showing up. Happy #InternationalLiteracyDay #EqualizingEducation

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Happy new week friends. Let us go own the day and start the week on a high note. Back here, it is another day of opening opportunities for children in rural schools who are trusting the system, flawed as it is, to take them to a brighter future.

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

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 https://t.co/MJZRkoPwj3, 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

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

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. https://t.co/5PhU8mxGg0

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

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. https://t.co/fGDbkXsi4j

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

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

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Children in rural schools want to learn. What they lack are books, support, and safe spaces. Our reading circles and community hubs fill that gap. When a child learns to read, their whole future opens. That is how Uganda moves forward.

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

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 https://t.co/s2O4GPQogI 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

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

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.

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Here, @zako_lyn helps explain exactly why this work matters and why waiting on the system alone is not an option. When a child cannot read and understand a simple text, everything else in school falls apart, from following instructions to solving a word problem in maths. #EqualizingEducation

[zakolyn. @zako_lyn]

Did you know that nearly 9 out of every 10 children in sub Saharan Africa cannot read and understand a simple text by the age 10. This means that approximately 202 million of sub- Saharan Africa school aged children cannot read. Let’s see how this affects us at home 1/

[zakolyn. @zako_lyn]

Did you know that nearly 9 out of every 10 children in sub Saharan Africa cannot read and understand a simple text by the age 10. This means that approximately 202 million of sub- Saharan Africa school aged children cannot read. Let’s see how this affects us at home 1/

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

Some people ask a reasonable question when they hear about this work. Why should the community get involved in teaching children to read when the schools are already there for that job?

The answer is in the numbers we do not like to look at. National learning assessments are finding that only about three out of ten Primary Three learners in Uganda can read a Primary Two-level story.

In some findings, more than seven out of ten P6 children, waiting to sit national exams which take them to secondary school, cannot read and understand a simple English passage at the level they should be on.

This is not a failure of the children but rather one of a school system that is underfunded, understaffed, and stretched far beyond what it can manage on its own. In many rural classrooms, one teacher stands in front of eighty children with no storybooks, no support, and no time to notice which child got left behind 2 years ago.

When a child cannot read, everything else in school falls apart. They cannot follow instructions. They cannot understand exam questions.

Mathematics becomes guesswork. Science, social studies, and religious education all depend on reading and comprehension.

The learning gap opens early in P1 or P2, and by the time the child reaches P5, P6 or P7, the gap is so wide that no ordinary classroom lesson can close it.

So, the child sits through years of school without truly learning, then leaves either at the end of primary or somewhere in between, carrying a certificate that says very little about what they can actually do. We then blame these young people for not being serious, when the truth is that nobody ever helped them fix a foundation that broke very early.

This is why the rest of us have to turn up. Government oversight does not reach these rural schools in any meaningful way. Funding is thin. Inspection is rare. Waiting for the system to fix itself is, at least for now, a comfortable way of doing nothing while another generation grows up unable to read.

The children in these classrooms are the citizens, voters, parents, and leaders of tomorrow's Uganda. A person who cannot read well is a person other people can read the world for, and we are already watching what happens to a country full of such people.

Getting involved in teaching a generation to read is one of the few real ways any of us can push back against the problems we complain about in leadership, in governance, and in the general state of the country.

If we want a different Uganda, we have to help build it one reader at a time.

Support our work at ELI @EqualizeEduc as we make attempts to close the learning gap.

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Help us train the five volunteers who will teach Nakisajja's children to read

Nakisajja is full of people who want their children to read well, and we have found five of them who are ready to make it happen. We identified the volunteers from within the community itself, assessed each one to be sure they were suited to the work, and they agreed to take it on.

These volunteers will run our literacy camps at Nakisajja Primary School. They were not brought in from elsewhere; they live in these villages, they know these children by name, and they understand this community in a way no outsider ever could.

A literacy camp begins where every sound teaching decision begins, with an honest picture of what each learner can already do.

Using an oral reading assessment called EGRA, the volunteer works with each child individually to establish their reading level, whether they can follow a short paragraph, manage a few words, or recognise only a handful of letters.

We then set class and age aside altogether and group the children by their actual reading ability, since a P5 learner who cannot read is not a P5 reader, whatever the register says.

After the assessment and grouping are done, these volunteers start meeting and carrying out the activities with the groups.

Much of the learning takes place outdoors after school and on the weekends. The children gather on the ground, which doubles as the writing surface, with boards reserved for rainy days.

We move them away from the classroom on purpose, since that is the very space where they first fell behind and lost interest in learning. Out in the open, through songs, games, and plenty of practice, a child who has never once raised a hand in class sounds out a first word, then reads it aloud, then works up to creating syllables, words, sentences, and full stories that they can retell in their own words.

Every two weeks, the volunteer reassesses the whole group. Learners who have progressed move up to the next level, those who have mastered reading up to full stories graduate out, and new children from the community step in to take their places. In this way, the camp keeps producing new readers right through the term.

This is the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach, a methodology recognised across Africa and Asia for doing the one thing conventional schooling so often fails to do. It meets learners at the level they have genuinely reached, rather than the level the curriculum assumes they should have reached, and it builds their foundational literacy from there.

Even though we have identified new volunteers willing to be part of this community-changing work, good intentions alone will not teach a child to read, which is where the training comes in.

Two experienced TaRL trainers, both of whom have spent years in Uganda's rural communities, will spend three full days with our volunteers.

These trainers will take our volunteers through the phonics sequence that moves a learner from letter sounds to fluent storytelling, the EGRA assessment itself, and the practical skill of reaching every kind of learner, including the child who is too shy to speak up, the child with a learning disability, and the child who has been told far too often that they are simply not clever.

The training will cost UGX 2,177,000, roughly USD 589. This covers the trainers' transport and accommodation, the volunteers' transport to the venue and back, meals for everyone across the three days, the venue itself, and the printed manuals and assessment tools.

It is a lean and honest budget, and every shilling of it puts these trained volunteers under the trees at Nakisajja, ready to begin teaching.

How to contribute
By MTN Mobile Money, use our MoMoPay code 32607875, followed by the amount you wish to give.

By bank, we are with Centenary Bank, Lyantonde Branch, under the account name Equal Learn Initiative Uganda Limited and account number 3100125309.

From outside Uganda, the simplest and most affordable option is Wise, at https://t.co/WmRT5BX09X or on the Wise app. You convert your own currency to Ugandan shillings and send to Equal Learn Initiative Uganda Limited, account 3100125309, with the bank listed as Centenary Rural Development Bank, Uganda. The transfer arrives within a day or two, and Wise can even schedule a monthly gift for you if you would prefer to give regularly.

Those who would rather use their own bank can wire to the same account with the SWIFT code CERBUGKAXXX, though the charges tend to be higher than if you use https://t.co/WmRT5BX09X.

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

[Doña Kassia @CatheyTweets]

Kids in rural Uganda still can't read basic letters.

@EqualizeEduc is fixing it with proven Teaching at the Right Level, training local volunteers in May for outdoor sessions.

Repost if you can't give today. Real impact starts here.

Support via MoMo [phone]

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

@CatheyTweets Thank you 🙏🏾

[Equal Learn Initiative Uganda @EqualizeEduc]

Update 👇🏾👇🏾

[King Melvin @melvinnasasira]

26 March 2026

Dear friends,

Thank you for following this work and for wanting to stay in the loop. I want to give you a proper update on where things stand since my pinned tweet and where we are headed.