I caught up with Community Women Enterprise Network CWEN, a non-profit organization that brings together women in entrepreneurship, and their women are doing wonders in the Education sector!
From creating dress-up games to encourage self-expression, phonics systems, and games that make learning maths fun (we all know fun and maths can't appear in the same sentence), these women are changing the education narrative!
We saw what the pandemic did to our education sector, with Uganda hitting the longest time of schools being closed for almost two years. These innovations are some of the reasons children still remembered how to read by the time schools finally got opened again.
Here are a few of the many women that are killing it in the Education sector;
Sarayah Namirembe is a storyteller, educator, and bestselling author of Ugandan folktales which include; the Hare and Ogre, the Hare and Hyena, and the Hare and the Lion to mention but a few.
Her writing career started in 2016. While her dream was to write and inspire primary going children to read, she recognized a reading skills gap in the education sector which challenged her to engage in teacher training and workshops.
Together with her team, she has reached over 30 schools and trained over 400 teachers in Kampala Wakiso and Mukono to pass on reading skills to young learners. She looks forward to learning and growing with other young women in the education sector.
Check out her work here
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| Saraya Namirembe |
Emily Banya is the co-founder of Utalii Creative, a company that promotes tourism using souvenirs starting with customized jigsaw puzzles, fridge magnets and playing cards (matatu) as a tool to highlight facts about Africa and in so doing tackling mental health.
1n 2019, Banya, encountered mental health challenges that helped her discover how the brain works. She bought a jigsaw puzzle for its usefulness in engaging the brain to solve problems and realized none of the puzzles she saw in the shop reflected Africa. This was the beginning of her innovation.
From puzzles to customized playing cards and the development of product lines, Utalii creative now collaborates with businesses and individuals using souvenirs and media. The use of souvenirs like jigsaw puzzles has proved to be a tool that can be leveraged for educational, promotional and mental health awareness purposes.
These innovations have yielded a growing collaboration between the National Zoo (UWEC) and Utalii Creative to promote conservation efforts in the country with an emphasis to find a viable use for recycled plastic in the manufacturing of locally produced souvenirs.
This has created advancements in the entrepreneurship world while tackling issues that are rather not prioritized but are very important in the education sector worldwide.
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| Emily Banya |
Agatha Kisakye Kabugo is a home school teacher who runs a homeschool support group and the Teen Mentorship Programme.
Her innovation prioritizes an individualized approach to mentoring teenagers. She recognized a gap in mentoring children. Children are usually mentored in a crowd and they still don’t know. This puts the out of touch with themselves and struggle with vices like low esteem, negative comparison to peers, and unnecessary competition, to mention but a few.
She encounters challenges in marketing her business but has currently mentored 30 children in 9 months. The future of her innovation she believes, will bring on board and train a team of child mentors and take mentorship to schools.
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| Agatha Kisakye Kabugo |
Judith Peace Adongo Epuchu is a teacher who has training in early childhood psychology and has developed a Phonics system (the sounding of the letters of the alphabet) for Uganda.
She has carried out several reading projects, volunteered in schools to run reading clubs, personally invested in libraries and carried out reading tents in various schools and organizations.
Her innovation is a phonics system that she wishes to see enrolled in teacher training colleges, schools, and for in-service teachers to use to equip children with a foundation for them to thrive and excel. The program has been implemented among parents who homeschool their children and in communities where she does literacy.
She founded an organization called Serane Parenting where she supports communities in literacy. They handle reading clubs in the schools in these communities.
She finds challenges in funding, and publicity for her Phonics system, and peoples’ mindset toward this innovation. She hopes to see fully running, well-stocked community libraries in each community.
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| Judith Peace Adongo Epuchu |
Estella Kabagaya, also known as Mama Children is a mentor and children’s caregiver who uses play to learn in her daycare programs for children of 0-6 years.
Her business, mama children’s village has been running for 10 years now and the last 5 have been in Wandegeya market until 2022. She intends to set up a green play area, where she uses nature to teach young ones, knowing the psychology behind the development of young children.
Her innovation also involves mental games, art programs and library sessions. She finds it key for her business and whoever works with her to have knowledge about child psychology because then, that is how children’s needs and development can be met.
Mama children considers
herself an entrepreneur and continues to work with more women in her
developments.
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| Estella Kabagaya |
Melissa Mugisa is a graphic designer and illustrator behind Doli Kids Krafts, a local brand for hand crafted dress up games for girls.
Her business, Doli Kids Crafts deals in paper doll dress up games fully illustrated and handcrafted by her. The game comes with Nambi, your paper doll, and a set of 30 clothing items plus hairstyles to mix and match according to the prompt.
The idea is to teach little girls to explore and express themselves through fashion.
She started it as a passion project while attempting to make a paper doll gift for her niece which encouraged her to develop a real product.
The lesson she aims to teach is self-expression. The game comes with trivia about different themes depending on the prompt, for example, a safari includes facts about the big five wildlife animals in Uganda.
Much as she is an illustrator, she considers herself an entrepreneur and continues to learn about marketing and branding and how to incorporate the business side of things.
She faces challenges like finding a platform to advertise to larger audiences with the competition on social media, and without a shop to sell her products. She is dependent on market days that come up once a month.
Her goal is to expand Doli beyond just a dress up
game into more toys for kids with the vision of making learning fun, and
building self-confidence even if it begins with learning something as small as
their fashion sense.
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| Melissa Mugisa |
Bwiiza Christine is a visual artist who uses drawing and painting skills to create more than just Art. She uses her skills to carry out Art workshops based on psychology whose facts aid her in understanding the needs of the age groups she tackles in order to deliver accordingly.
She has been an active artist since 2019 and taught WASH (water sanitation & hygiene) workshops through Art by developing drawing and colouring sessions through encouraging active thinking and allowing children to be themselves.
Besides painting and illustration, she develops educational toys, illustrated colouring books, murals, paintings and more.
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| Bwiiza Christine |
Basemera Stella Maris Mugume is a transformational math educator, creative learning methods researcher and CEO of Creative Learning Africa.
After her last school practice in 2015, she recognized a gap in Math teaching and learning. Tr. Basemera then began her career as a freelance math tutor, and in 2017 registered her business, Creative Learning Africa.
She has since tutored, carried out teacher training, and published logical reasoning books namely; Fun Maths Activities, Math Practice Games, and Miss Math Comic book.
Her innovation develops approaches to learning math, from kindergarten to senior six. Tr. Basemera develops formulas for learning and understanding math in different classes through the use of games, art, music and all creative means available, making math fun for learners.
She created interactive WhatsApp classrooms to enable learning amidst the COVID-19 crisis, and still uses it today. From Uganda to the United Kingdom, 500 students have benefited from her math tutoring services.
She is currently working on Creative Totos, an online learning site in partnership with Young Treps. She continues to hire women in her business and looks forward to distributing learning materials in communities, especially the less advantaged ones.
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| Basemera Stella Maris Mugume |
Growing up, she adopted a reading culture from her mother's encouragement. She started her social enterprise in 2016 to promote a reading culture among children in her community.
Since its inception, Tusome Children’s Reading club, has had 40 children accessing reading services, from her garage turned library at her home, this number was constant till 2019 when the global pandemic forced shutdowns.
Her social enterprise has employed two teachers and currently works with 15 children from nursery class to primary six and this number is only growing. This works through the availability of books, space, and reading curators.
Her challenges are lack of reading materials, space and salaries for the women she employs in her business. Lillian intends to grow Tusome Children’s Reading Club into a children’s library, collaborating with organizations that share the same goals and encouraging reading for young people going through school.
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| Lillian Nakiwala Nyakana |
