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For ⅔ of our students, January 10, 2022 marked the first time back to any kind of school since March of 2020, when students were sent home after only a month of school. Without access to remote learning, these students were out of school for the past two years. BOHC candidate students taking exams– those in Senior 4 and Senior 6– had a little school, but their class-time was very interrupted:
After so long out of school, many students have become “lost learners”. Uganda’s Ministry of Education estimates that fully 30% of learners did not return to their classrooms in 2022. BOH is currently only at 72% enrollment. Many former students now work to provide extra income to their families during the recession. Other students are married and/or pregnant. Nationwide, teenage pregnancy went from 1 in 4 young women to 1 in 3. Parents are also finding it increasingly difficult to pay tuition, as inflation is high, and commodities are extremely expensive. Basics like sugar, soap, cooking oil and fuel have nearly doubled in price. All of this will pose a challenge as BOH seeks to increase enrollment!
Impact on Campus Today
For the students who have been home for a long time, the transition to the disciplined schedule of a typical school day has been a challenge. The first few months of the school year have been spent settling the students; only now do BOH teachers report that students are at last able to focus and study properly.
Though the pandemic has been challenging, the BOH community is delighting in being back together, and enjoying learning very much. With the economy open and vaccines increasingly available, the mood in the country is positive. Despite many difficulties still to overcome, hope runs high. Please pray for BOH students and their families, as well as school faculty and staff.
For many students in the U.S., the pandemic has forced them to engage in online learning for the rest of this school year, and possibly the next. But how is the pandemic affecting our students at Beacon of Hope, many who do not have access to a computer or Wifi, making online learning impossible?
Here is an overview:
Please join us in praying for our students, their families, and our teachers.
We’ve just received a $23k grant to do remote education at Beacon of Hope School. A massive THANK YOU to The Allen Family Foundation for this game-changing grant! We can now purchase tablets and internet access for all 80 A-level candidate students and instructors for the 5 remaining months of the school year.
We will be providing IT support as well. This grant will allow our students to access online educational materials like their more advantaged peers in urban centers, and to study for their national exams. This grant truly levels the playing field.
The tablets will have an important “life beyond the pandemic”. The tablets will become property of the school, to be redistributed for use by next year’s incoming Senior 6 class. Our eventual hope is to provide tablets for IT instruction to the whole student body, as an essential part of preparing young women and men for the 21st century. We are thrilled to start with this year’s candidate class.
Moses, who’s been the Sponsorship Officer since Pilgrim’s inception in 2001, knows all too intimately the joys and pains of informing children whether or not they get sponsored to attend school.
There are countless children like Racheal here, children who hope and hunger for nothing more than the right to an education. Informing their yearning faces that we can’t afford to enroll any more students is a wholly heart-wrenching experience. It is an honor to help people achieve the basic needs of education, food, medication that they’ve been denied. I look into the eyes of these children and their eyes are asking for intervention in their future.
Will you intervene for one of these children?
The hardest moments in my job is telling children that we can’t afford to enroll any more students. You can see that they have no alternative, especially for those barely living off of one meal a day. I’ve had many children follow me to school, pleading to be accepted. One girl walked over 50 km with her luggage on her head just looking for an education; another girl sat on the compound until we took her in; she eventually graduated and went to university.
Everyone has potential; education can be the key to unlocking it.
I have seen the children uplift the school, climbing ladders of success and excellence. I worry where these students would be or what would become of their immense potential if they had been left in the camps, bushes, or villages.
There are more children left in the camps, in the bush, among villages lacking access to education, will you sponsor them?
You can support students by giving the gift of HOPE using our Giving Catalog!
My name is Racheal Atuko and I am an 18-year-old student at Beacon of Hope College.
My family has been very poor and broken since childhood and yet, I am a firm believer in the phrase ‘things happen for a reason’. When my father refused to pay for my schooling, my mother dumped me at BOH with no money and moved away. When I found a mass in my breast, I couldn’t afford the surgery or painkillers that I needed. Doctors feared I had breast cancer. I experienced various levels of pain due to my medical condition and my family’s abandonment. But, I believe this all led me to BOH and there I found a community I could rely on.
I feel like I’m the luckiest to have joined BOH. This school has been a life-changing blessing for me, like a small, happy family where I find my peace and strength. My financial state meant that I couldn’t afford food, school supplies, or even my breast surgery, and I often felt so alone and miserable. But through all this, my friends and teachers at BOH reassured and supported me in every way (my friends even paid for my surgery); they were the family that did not abandon me.
I believe things happen for a reason; I believe all the pain I endured led me to the love I found at BOH; I believe you are reading this now so I can tell you that people like me exist—people whose lives have been saved from misery and brightened by BOH.
Your support is so important to us because, without Beacon of Hope, our lives would have been forever lost in the brokenness of poverty and sickness. But thanks to you, we are studying, we are provided for, we are loved. So, thank you for providing for us and I implore you to please continue your generosity; there are more like me.
May God bless you,
Racheal Atuko
P.S. You are reading this for a reason.
In Uganda, the number of children in attendance drastically plummets from primary to secondary school. Census data from 2004 indicates that for every ten students in primary schools, only one is enrolled in secondary schools. Pilgrim Africa has assumed a comprehensive approach in our mission to remedy this: our malaria research, clinics, and scholarships work together to circumvent the challenges of poverty and sickness that prevent most Ugandan children from their education.
Most recently, Pilgrim Africa has adopted another approach to fulfill this mission—the Annex Renovations. These renovations are seeing abandoned and derelict buildings transformed into fully furnished classrooms, dormitories, latrines, and kitchen spaces.
Our vision of sustainability is infused throughout these renovations as we have implemented solar panels with back-up battery charging systems, and a rainwater catchment tank (which is already filled with fresh water from the seasonal rains).
Though final renovations are still ongoing, the dormitories were opened to the students in September. This was a joyous and exciting event for them since, compared to their previous overcrowded dorms, these new dorms provided them with spacious living quarters and healthier living conditions. A houseparent also expressed his enthusiasm that the children “would finally have access to reliable light and decent bathrooms.”
On the left below, you’ll see the old dormitories, and pictured on the right below are the new bed frames in the new dormitory on the Annex property.
These dorms also increase our school’s enrollment capacity. The dorms currently house 154 of our 658 students, but next year they will be able to house 300 extra students—that’s 300 more Ugandan children receiving an education year over year!
The Annex Renovations serves as an example of Pilgrim Africa’s dedication to Uganda’s children and as a reminder that anything can be given new life and transformed into something meaningful and instrumental.
THANK YOU to The Zarmada Giving Fund for making these renovations possible!