Tuesday evening are special. Every week we’ve been in Gulu for the last 4 years, we’ve run an evening class for kids in the neighbourhood. They live within 200 meters of our house, and we’re really close with them. We focus on catching up kids who have missed large chunks of school because their parents couldn’t afford the fees. We also have a library of story books which kids can borrow from – if they can prove they’ve read their current book! In the last year we’ve exchanged over 200 books with the kids. While yesterday Tessa arranged the whole library, lazy me just made the kids laugh for the photo.

We have 3 classes based on ability. Tessa takes the lower two, and I take the older kids. This is the middle class. Why so serious?

Our visitors have been a great help with the class, and many have run their own programmes during the week to help give the kids an extra boost. Some of the results have been remarkable. Phoebe helped one girl to improve her reading and math by over 2 year levels in just 3 months. Six of the kids are sponsored to school through generous friends and churches, and will now finish primary school without missing another day. Thank you!

Lydia was always ready to drop whatever she was doing to read with the kids.  Lydia designed a star system where kids get a sticker for every book they read. Three kids have read over 10 books already! Sharon (below) is keen and focused, but over 5 years behind due to missing school and poor teaching.

Ira re-invigorated math for the older kids, and helped pitch the work more at the individual levels of the kids. (Nearly) all of these kids are from our class.

Mum is the biggest contributor to the  library, which now includes classics like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild things are and Dr. Seuss. While she was here she did class every day for a week, which was extremely popular. She may or may not have given out a few more stickers than we usually do ;).

And a huge thanks to our resident education expert Jody for making this all possible by showing us how to teach her wonderful phonics program.