By Leonard Byabagambi | Project Lead
Background:
During design of the project, CSU had planned to support 50 blind children with different interventions including; sanitary towels, tuition, uniform, a ream of braille paper among others. However, following the World Health Organisation’s declaration of COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 and its rapid spread across the globe, Uganda's education institutions were closed and children accessed schools no more and therefore no learning.
The funds received in April 2020 were not utilised immediately since the country was in total lockdown and no activities were going on until 4th June 2020.
Implementation:
In response to closure of schools, the government under the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) developed self study materials for distribution to children national wide. Despite the effort of developing self study learning materials by the government, no consideration was made for the blind children.
On realising that materials were not accessible to the blind children, we worked with NCDC using the funds from GlobalGiving to adapt the developed learning materials into braille which is in an accessible formats for the blind children. The adapted braille materials are open to cater for over 2000 blind learners in primary and secondary schools in Uganda.However, to have all learners access the learning materials, it would require addditional investment in printing and distribution.
Achievements:
Using the funds we have been able to print the adapted brailled self-study materials for 26 blind girls, the materials will be distributed soon to the upcountry district of Soroti. CSU is still mobilizing resources to support the remaining 24 blind girls with braille self study materials.
Note: It should be noted that with the continued delay in reopening of schools due to COVID-19, new materials are being developed by NCDC to cater for the full academic year. This means that CSU has to look for more funds to support access to the newly developed materials by the 50 or more blind children.
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