Uganda Community Schools Initiative
In rural Lira, we transform mud-brick classrooms by providing desks and notebooks, turning the local commitment to education into actual results.
The problem No one is SolvingÂ
In the rural districts surrounding Lira and Alebtong, in Northern Uganda, hundreds of children arrive at school each morning carrying almost nothing — because the schools themselves have almost nothing to give them.
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The community schools are organized by local community leaders committed to improving the lives of their children. Classes are held in aging mud brick structures with dirt floors or in the open air underneath shade trees. Basic school supplies such as pens, notebooks, blackboards, desks, and chairs are typically not available. Teachers deal with this as best as they can.
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There is no central government program filling this gap. No regional ministry writing checks. These communities are, in the most literal sense, on their own — except that they refuse to give up. And so the teachers show up. Drawn from the community itself, every one of them unpaid, they show up because the children show up.
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They receive no salary, no stipend, no institutional support of any kind. They teach because they made a decision that someone needed to be there for these children — and that someone would be them
Who We AreÂ
The Ugandan Community School Initiative grew out of a direct, personal encounter with this reality.
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In 2025, a San Francisco-based Operating Room nurse traveled to Gulu, Northern Uganda, as part of a surgical medical mission with Medical Missions from Kansas City. There, he met Awech Francis, a Ugandan social worker and community advocate based in Lira, who had served as a translator for a previous medical group. Francis described what he witnessed every week in the schools he visited in outlying rural areas: 500 children across two community schools without basic supplies, sharing pencils and pens and writing on paper balanced on their laps because there were no desks to sit at and no notebooks to write in.
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When the nurse returned home, he didn’t file it away. He organized a GoFundMe campaign, reached out to friends and family through Facebook, and raised $1,600. Through Awech Francis’s local knowledge and purchasing arrangements, those funds were converted into notebooks, pens, mathematics kits, portable blackboards, classroom desks and chairs, and recreational footballs for two community schools near Lira.
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It worked. Children who had shared a single pencil among several classmates now had their own supplies. Teachers who had spoken into open air under a tree now had a surface to write on and a room to teach in. That campaign proved the model. This initiative is the next step: scaling it, sustaining it, and reaching a wider community of supporters who understand that functional literacy and basic numeracy are not luxuries — they are the foundation of everything
The Communities We Serve
THE COMMUNITIES WE SERVE In our inaugural campaign, we provided school supplies, desks and chairs, blackboards, and footballs to two community schools near Lira and Alebtong: Anwata Community School and Aberidwogo Community School. Building on that foundation, our current campaign extends support to two additional schools in the same region — Agira Community School and Atingtwo Community School — before conducting formal assessments of further schools that may be brought into the initiative in future cycles.
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The schools we support sit in rural communities in the districts surrounding Lira, the administrative center of Northern Uganda’s Lango subregion. This is a region that carries the weight of decades of displacement and conflict, and whose recovery has been slow, uneven, and largely self-driven.
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Getting to these schools often requires navigating unpaved roads that become impassable in rainy season. The villages they serve are agricultural communities — subsistence farming households where children’s labor is economically meaningful, which makes the community’s commitment to keeping children in school all the more remarkable.
The TeachersÂ
The teachers at these community schools are not the forgotten heroes of a distant country. They are your neighbors, if you reframe the map — parents, former students, community members who made a decision that someone needed to be there for the children, and that someone would be them.
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They receive no salary, no stipend, and no support from any government body at any level. They are entirely unpaid. They teach because they were asked, because they care, and because they understand something that development economists have spent decades confirming: that the single greatest predictor of intergenerational change in a rural community is whether its children can read and do basic mathematics.
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Their dedication deserves to be matched with tools.
What Your Donation ProvidesÂ
 $25 supplies a classroom with chalk, erasers, and nine dozen notebooks for a semester.
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$50 equips a classroom with 10 mathematics sets, two portable blackboards, and pens for a semester.
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$100 covers the cost of transporting supplies and desks/chairs from Lira to the community schools.
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$500 covers the cost of 10 desk and chair sets, providing seating for up to five students each.
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Every dollar donated through this initiative goes directly to the purchase of school materials. There are no administrative salaries, no overhead costs absorbed from your donation, and no institutional middlemen between your contribution and a child sitting down to learn with the supplies they need. Awech Francis manages purchasing locally, which keeps costs low, ensures goods reach the schools directly, and supports the local economy in the process.
FULL ACCOUNTABILITY
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INTEGRITY
We provide a complete itemized accounting of every dollar spent, ensuring no administrative overhead or middlemen stand between your gift and a student's desk.
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EVIDENCE
Expect photographic proof and direct field reports from Lira for every delivery, confirming exactly which community and school has received your support.
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PARTNERS
Led by social worker Awech Francis, our local purchasing model supports the regional economy while ensuring all materials reach the classrooms directly.
A Case for Giving Now
Five hundred children across two schools in these communities are of school age. They are showing up. Their teachers — every one of them unpaid — are showing up. The schools, built by their parents and grandparents on the belief that education matters, are still standing.
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What is missing is modest by any accounting: notebooks, pens, blackboards, desks. The gap between what these schools have and what would allow them to function adequately is not vast. It is bridgeable — by exactly the kind of practical, direct, accountable giving this initiative was built to deliver.
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Healthcare professionals understand, more than most, that intervention at the right moment changes outcomes. Literacy is that intervention. A child who learns to read at age seven has a different life trajectory than a child who does not. That difference compounds across a generation.
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Service organizations, foundations, and faith communities that direct resources toward education in underserved regions will find in this initiative a model that is lean, accountable, locally-anchored, and demonstrably effective.
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We have done this before. We know it works. And we are asking you to help us do more of it.
Get InvolvedÂ
Donate directly — any amount, one time or recurring.
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Share this page with your network — professional associations, service clubs, faith communities, hospital departments, or anyone who believes that deeds matter more than words.
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Contact us if your organization is interested in a partnership, a matched giving campaign, or direct sponsorship of a specific school.
