In response to the huge influx of South Sudanese refugees crossing the border into northern Uganda in 2017 we are proud to share that we have received funding to build a children’s learning hub in Imvepi Refugee Settlement. Young refugees in the settlement face a number of challenges with accessing education – limited schools and resources are resulting in packed classrooms and limited learning opportunities. Xavier Project is excited to be working with the community to overcome some of these challenges with the use of pioneering learning methods and by creating a safe space for learning.
Xavier Project is working together with leaders from the South Sudanese refugee community and members from the host community to create the hub. This team, the Community Alliance for Youth Empowerment (CAYE), will lead the project. This month, CAYE launched the construction of the hub by beginning to clear the land designated to the project and lay the foundations for the three-classroom structure. The South Sudanese community within the camp helped with this first phase and will be supporting to work through to its completion in September of this year.
Refugee children will be able to access books, tablets and computers
The community hub will be a three-classroom learning centre, consisting of a library, a computer lab and a training room. Refugee children will be able to access books, tablets and computers with the guidance of community volunteers. A variety of learning packages will be offered to out-of-school children, students with specific learning needs and also students who attend after school or during weekends. An example of this is the Enuma KitKit. The KitKit app improves literacy and numeracy through the use of tablets and transforms the children into individual learners. Another program is iGCSE for refugees, a way to enable out-of-school refugees to obtain an internationally recognised iGCSE certificate through online studying.
Whilst the hub is under construction with a completion date of September, Xavier Project has already started running KitKit sessions on the tablets to a small group of students in several schools and we are in the process of training community volunteers ahead of the launch. These schools are currently working to a teacher/student ratio that reaches up to 1:240+. This innovative way of delivering education offers the students the opportunity to study independently and at their own pace.
‘Xavier Project opened our eyes to a better future’
Isaac Henry, the team leader of CAYE is very happy with the support from Xavier Project: “Xavier Project opened our eyes to a better future. The people from Xavier Project came to the community, and it lifted the community up. They give the community a chance to do things on their own, which is encouraging them to think about the future.”
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