Soft Power Education

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About Soft Power Education

Here they are in their own words. Should you find yourself thinking: "They sound amazing. I'd like to contribute!" I have good news for you. Go to my JustGiving page and you can donate.


"We are a British-registered, non-religious charity and a Ugandan registered NGO. Initially we built two preschools for AIDS Orphans, which we continue to run. Each has around 120 children under the age of five and the preschools provide an opportunity for them to be children, have some fun and learn some important life skills. Each preschool has three teachers and a cleaner/cover tutor. Soft Power Education covers all the running costs of both preschools.

In 1997 the Ugandan government introduced Universal Primary Education (UPE) and net enrolment in primary schools rose from 2.3 million in 1996 to 7.5 million in 2004 (UNICEF). Whilst this has been an incredible success story for Uganda, improvements to facilities in order to enable schools to cope with this increased number of students were not made. Schools suddenly faced the challenges of overcrowding in poorly constructed classrooms together with a severe lack of teaching aids and equipment.

In 2003 we started on a five-year project to refurbish the 20 government primary schools within the local sub-county of Budondo. With the help of overland truck passengers, long term volunteers and groups of students, we have since exceeded this goal. To date we have worked at 34 primary schools in four different sub-counties. We have built and painted 57 new classrooms, refurbished 135 and painted 180 - a total of over 370 classrooms! In addition we have installed seventeen 8,000 litre, four 50,000 litre, two 1,000 litre and one 3,000 litre water catchment tanks and excavated over 50 pit latrines. All classrooms have been painted both inside and outside and most also now have educational teaching aids on the classroom walls. All of this has been possible thanks to the phenomenal amount of help we have received. We work solely with the Government Primary Schools as we can guarantee that these will continue to be schools. We cannot guarantee this with private or community-based schools.

We have also built a special needs unit complete with books and materials; built a special needs dormitory; resourced a Teacher Training Centre, held an International Arts Project and at several sites run a Youth Training Programme for young males within the community.

Having completed such an extensive amount of work within the primary schools we have also assisted in the building of a local Health Clinic, run by our sister charity Soft Power Health; built a working pottery and recently completed The Amagezi Education Centre in the heart of Kyabirwa village close to Bujagali Falls. Three days a week 60 pupils from one of the schools we work with come to the centre to experience a completely different style of teaching. They attend classes in IT, Science, Art and Craft, Agriculture and Drama. When the kids aren’t at school the centre becomes an inspiring community centre offering community development programmes in 14 areas from IT courses to drama workshops and building fuel efficient stoves. The centre was funded thanks to hard working groups of volunteers and in particular a group of students from Leeds University.

Just this year we embarked on a new project in the Murchison Falls National Park. The north of Uganda has been war-torn and ravaged for a long time. Whilst things are now much more stable there, the schools are still in a bad state. We have taken on 17 of them to renovate as we have done around Jinja. The area has also been classified as a ‘biodiversity hotspot’. This means that it has lost 70%!o(MISSING)f its natural fauna and flora. In an aim to reduce this through improving the conservation education, we are also in the process of building an education centre working closely with the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

We have been able to complete all of our targets through the continued support of visiting tourists, independent long term volunteers, hardworking groups of students and inspired donors."

Find out more on their website.

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