This project will help blind students in Uganda continue their education during COVID-related school closures. Most of these students currently have no access to Braille books or teachers. Our goal is to support 60 blind students by purchasing MP3 players (including headphones and chargers), preloading them with teacher lectures, and delivering them to the students at their homes. We will swap out the memory cards as needed so that the student can access new educational material over time.
There are two schools for the blind in our Mukoko District community - Salama School for the Blind and Sir Apollo Kagwa Secondary School. Many of these students are boarders due to the lack of educational programs for blind students in Uganda. Due to COVID-related closures they are in their home villages without access to educational or reading materials. These students are already at an educational disadvantage, and are at severe risk of falling further behind and not maintaining their skills.
We will use the purchased equipment to deliver educational materials directly to these students' homes. Teachers have agreed to record lectures onto the MP3 players, and we will deliver them to the students and show them how to use them. Our organization, Music for Life Africa (MULIA), has previously partnered with these schools to deliver donations of Braille books, and we are planning additional ongoing musical collaborations. We believe that we are all stronger when we support each other.
Providing this educational support now increases the likelihood that these blind students will be able to maintain and grow their skills, reach their potential, feel valued, and maintain their joy of learning during these challenging times. After schools reopen, we will continue to use these MP3 players so that these blind students as well as MULIA students (mostly at-risk youth) will be able use them for music education and to increase their literacy through accessing recordings of books.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
