WE’RE ELIMINATING MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY IN OUR VILLAGE THROUGH EDUCATION.

Each year, our goal is to grow in relationship and impact with our community.

2021 ANNUAL REPORT

We Grew Deep Roots Last Year.

Last year we broke ground and laid bricks in our village, cementing our footprint of impact and future work in our promising community. It was quite emotional to realize that Acutomer Village was officially our home! Witnessing the construction sealed our commitment to this community and reminded us of God’s faithfulness to see the vulnerable—the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the orphan—and to redeem their lives through the resources he has graced us to give.

2021 Annual Report →

Click here to see how we’ve grown compared to our 2020 Annual Report!

25% Primary School Dropout Rate

1 in 4 children who start primary school in Uganda makes
it to secondary school

UNICEF UGANDA 2019

40% Primary Level Literacy Rate

Nearly half of all Uganda’s students are still illiterate when
they reach primary 6

UNICEF UGANDA 2019

There is a life-threatening educational crisis happening in our village and throughout the entire Acholi tribal sub-region.

We are building a school pipeline in our village as a means of crisis intervention in the lives of our community’s children and their futures. If you know the history of our village—over two-decades of insurgency, present day multidimensional poverty, and economical activity restricted to farming alone—then you know there is an urgency behind our mission to build schools. Considering there has never been a secondary school in our village, opening our first school of many in February 2023 means providing the opportunity to excel beyond the primary school level, and escape the plagues of poverty and illiteracy keeping our village bound.

A study conducted on Uganda’s school-aged children and youth revealed that, “With close to 60% of [Uganda’s] population below 18 years of age, and over 75% below the age of 35 years, children’s cognitive development represents Uganda’s greatest natural resource.” That resource can only be cultivated in a strong academic setting and there are simply no schools. In fact, the trickling effects of proper cognitive development could reach our particular village in a tremendously transformative way. Still, without educational infrastructure, our community has no access to this privilege.

In villages like ours, the direct effects of a lack of education can be witnessed daily. In our community, we see sickness constantly carry our neighbors to distant hospitals where their medical reports can’t be read. In our community, we see young girls giving birth as young as 13 years because they have no motivation to study or school fees to attend.

In our community, we see families owning hundreds of acres of ancestral land, yet intimidated by the protective land title process due to illiteracy. And in our community, we see present family members prefer alcohol over a subpar yet available education for their children because they assume schooling to be worthless if it results in their children remaining subsistence farmers alike after primary (grade) 7.

These devastating scenarios describe deep suffering that spreads like a wild bush fire throughout our village, and the entire Acholi subregion. According to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Oxford University this suffering is called multidimensional poverty. This poverty captures the lives of our neighbors and their Acholi tribe as one of the top 6 poorest subregions in all of Uganda, living on less than $2.15 per day. This monetary deprivation deprives them of essential needs such as education, health, and adequate living standards.

This impoverished state reiterates our life-changing opportunity to not just build schools for our community’s children. Instead, we know that this is the chance to establish a pipeline of hope from the nursery/preschool level, to graduating secondary, vocational, and university students that get to access more, know more, and therefore achieve more in their promising futures.

76%

OF children in acholi sub-region are experiencing multidimensional poverty

56%

of uganda’s children are deprived of 6+ things deemed essential by ugandans

1 of 6

acholi is in the top 6 poorest subregions in uganda with a dense child population

60%

of uganda’s population is below 18 years and over 75% is below 35 years

Situation Analysis of Children in Uganda, 2019

90% Do Not Own Two Pairs of Shoes

UNICEF Uganda calls these children multidimensionally poor and deprived of their constitutional right to adequate clothing

73% Cannot Afford School Uniforms

The 2019 Situation Analysis of Children Uganda declared this for multidimensionally poor children compared only 57% of all children

Between 1996 and 2003 the government spent 20% of the national budget on education but this has since gone down to 11%.

The above quote is according to the 2019 report, the Situation Analysis of Children in Uganda, 2019, by UNICEF Uganda, the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development in Uganda, and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. This comprehensive report breaks down the effects of child deprivation and poverty that transcends generations for children across Uganda. The report also contains different areas of focus and intentionally includes education.

Using the frameworks, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, the situation analysis describes the need to protect children’s rights and how they are being neglected in the country. Education, a literally life-changing sector of the economy, is drastically suffering due to budget cuts made in 2003 that haven’t improved since.

Now put that time frame into perspective for vulnerable children living in multigenerational poverty today. In 2006, just 3 years after the budget cut went into effect, the LRA War had ended in Northern Uganda but the chance to gain a quality education had drastically reduced for Acholi children there. This was majorly because the money once funneled into a decent public school education had been allocated elsewhere.

Practically, this meant that the effects of war and inefficient education funding caused a significance imbalance to the opportunity for educational equity in Northern Uganda. Poor families and children, including those that are extremely vulnerable such as orphans, could no longer benefit from the easy access to a good education simply because the government loosened its grip on their futures.

The heartbreaking reality is that decreasing the education budget wasn’t simply a budget cut. It ultimately cut off the Acholi tribe’s access to a way out of poverty through education and the income-generating opportunities it could have afforded them.

Sadly, today’s Acholi parents and grandparents that were not schooling for survival during the war, now have children and grandchildren that are also not gaining an education simply because it is unaffordable. And if by chance they get to attend school, their education is deemed worthless by subpar quality standards.

This is a serious problem for Acholiland and its children. A lack of access to quality education is continually placing its children’s futures at-risk for multidimensional and multigenerational poverty, illiteracy, and a lack of self-advocacy plaguing the entire region.

Rates of Multidimensional Poverty among Uganda's Poorest Sub-Regions

A child’s right to education entails the right to learn.