Kampala, UGANDA – Before the strike of the COVID-19 pandemic, underserved communities in Uganda were already victims of malaria, HIV/AIDS, the vice of Gender-Based Violence in both schools and communities, and above all the poor education system – issues that have been addressed though not to full capacity.
Last year, on 5th November 2021 at Blend Gardens in Kalerwe, the U.S Mission in Uganda, together with their implementing partner Open Space Center, launched the Nile Explorer Bus 2.0 project – a bus that serves as a mobile American space and travels throughout Uganda conducting programming for secondary students in various underserved communities in STEM, health, and life skills.
The bus serves these educational purposes and is equipped with computers, basic STEM laboratory materials, and informational healthcare resources, which the Open Space trainers use to engage the students, aged 13 to 19, in activities.
The project seeks to fulfill several key objectives, in line with the U.S. Mission in Uganda’s goals: inspire students in Uganda through extracurricular educational enrichment, provide information about educational opportunities in the United States, and empower youth through information they need to live healthy, safe lives.
Operating countrywide, with a special focus on rural underserved communities that are in greatest need of the resources offered by the Nile Explorer Bus, the team has, as of March 2022, engaged over 360 students and 30 community leaders and teachers during 12 stops in secondary schools in Gulu, Amolatar, Wakiso, Rakai, Kampala, Sembabule, Mukono, and Entebbe.
As the world evolves every day, availing of practical and realistic sessions is more uplifting and tangible to the learners compared to the theoretical educational system. The STEM sessions, for example, comprised of building both stable structures and robots, familiarizing with electromagnetic experiments, building light bulbs, and most importantly, using the STEM equipment and knowledge to come up with projects and solutions to the problems faced in the different communities such as pollution, robbery, power shortage and outage, soil erosion, early teenage pregnancies, and so much more.
And because health is wealth, with support from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the health component of the Nile Explorer Bus involves training on priority issues: HIV/AIDS, malaria, menstrual hygiene, and school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV). The objective is to create awareness of these issues, reinforce messages of prevention in order to reduce their prevalence, and reduce the rate of high-school dropouts in these underserved communities.
All thoughts and efforts put towards this project hope that the young learners will become ambassadors to their own communities with a message rather than simply having a one-off and that they sustain the information and what they have been taught through the few engagements they have had so far.
