An educator expands literacy in Uganda
When teacher Sophie Bamwoyeraki became president of the Rotary Club of Kasangati, Uganda, in 2016, her students quizzed her about what special thing she would do to help the community. Her answer came easily. Her club had helped create classrooms in the village of Makukuba after a child died making the 6-kilometer trek (nearly 4 miles) to the nearest school during heavy rain. She decided to scale up the effort. “From that time, every president who came would construct another classroom block,” she says. “If you go to Makukuba today, it’s a different place altogether.”
Image credit: Kibuuka Mukisa
Literacy has long been one of Bamwoyeraki’s passions. She grew up in a family of 12 and was always reading to the children in her neighborhood. She’s since earned her master’s in education and become a school principal in Kampala, the capital. She represents the Basic Education and Literacy Rotary Action Group as its technical officer with The Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers, and she’s a Major Donor to the Foundation.
She says literacy can preserve a community’s history and decide its future. Her parents don’t know when they were born because their parents didn’t know how to read or write. High literacy rates in adults lead to higher literacy rates in children. “If everyone can read and write, they can encourage the coming generation to read and write,” she says. “It can affect their ability to grow their community.”
That’s why she starts an Interact club wherever she works. “I like exposing these children to the reality in our communities,” she says. “They’re going to learn something new and they’re going to be hands on.”
This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.