We aim at improving the living standards of vulnerable children, orphans and youth by promoting formal and informal education, providing accommodation to the orphans and advocating for their basic fundamental human rights and social justice.
Like many African countries, Uganda faces the challenge of providing quality and accessible basic education to children and adults.
Although the attendance for primary level has been increasing since 1997 due to the introduction of Universal Primary Education, the quality of teaching and learning requires significant improvement.
Only 1 in 4 children who starts primary school makes it to secondary school. 1+ million children that enrol in Primary One are unable to complete their primary education as they either drop out, get stuck in the system or pass away along the way.
Teacher absenteeism is high in Uganda, with more than 60 per cent of teachers not in the classroom teaching, which is more than half of the public schools in the country.
40% of pupils are literate at the end of their primary school
Due to the lack of special needs teachers and requirements, Children with disabilities are generally excluded from formal schooling.
Students that complete their education from Kyazanga Modern Primary School join the active Kyazanga Modern Old Students Association (KMOSA) such that they mentored in aspects of Education, Behaviour etc.
The aim is to make sure that when they are back into the community as healthy, educated, and well-adjusted adults, they play a part in rebuilding their community and country into a positive and prosperous society and nation in general.
Children at school are also guided on what to do for their families and communities, which has helped raise a new breed of young leaders who work together to transform their community.
Through Joy For Humanity, the Bright Heart Children program was introduced to teach children to live with six universal principles of courage, compassion, truth, justice, freedom, and peace. This innovative programme which is embedded into classroom teaching in this rural school, has seen it ranked among the top 200 primary schools in Uganda, a highly rare achievement for a rural school.
Plans are underway to establish a Modern Secondary School that will help take up the Primary Leavers who fail to continue their education due to lack of requirements even after attaining best grades at the Primary level. Enough Land for the Secondary School project has been acquired, and Joy For Humanity is looking for partners to start the construction of modern facilities.
Joy for Humanity also plans to establish Uganda Innovation Centre (UIC), a “smart” centre that will work as a model for young technology innovators and entrepreneurs in Uganda. This will help to have a generation of leaders who will be empowered with technology and entrepreneurship skills that will promote quality life for themselves, their families, the community and the country.
UIC will be open to all innovative students and people and will incorporate individual student and teams with venture entrepreneur and technology incubation programs. These will be mentored to get qualified into Tested Projects Launch Laboratory (TPLL) with ready projects to be commercialised.
Voila Namatovu joined the JFH Bright Hearts children’s Home in 2007 with other seven girls. While in the Home, Voila attended Kyazanga Modern Primary School and was also educated in a human enrichment program based on the six Bright Heart Principles of Courage, Compassion, Truth, Justice, Freedom and Peace.
Voila completed her Primary Education, joined Secondary School and Teacher Training College and completed her Teacher’s Training Education in 2018.
Voila is now making a difference in the community as a teacher at Kyazanga Modern Primary School.
With different innovative ideas in education, Joy for Humanity provides a model for Uganda, which will help solve the most pressing needs through entrepreneurship and technology innovation, hence providing innovation-focused learning and development.
These innovative ideas in education are the gateway to Uganda’s vision of becoming a middle-income country as it’s not possible if millions of children continue to leave school without basic literacy and numeracy skills.