Meet Samantha: a remarkable young woman who is achieving her dreams thanks to a programme run by Viva and CRANE, our partner network in Uganda. Discover how she is also now helping other girls to follow their passions too.

The opportunities for a Ugandan girl accessing education are threatened by many factors, poverty and death of parents being the most prevalent.

Samantha hails from a small village, miles away from Kampala. It’s a very remote area with few schools in her community, and hardly any girls make it past primary school.

At a young age, Samantha and her sister Sara lost both their parents. Their maternal grandmother, a subsistence farmer, took care of the girls. Aged 14, Sara became pregnant and was forced to drop out of school. With a meagre income and a growing family, their grandmother could no longer meet the needs of both girls, let alone a baby on the way.

Samantha was 16 years old and left with no choice but to also drop out and support the growing family. A year later, two mentors from a local organisation, who is a member of CRANE, visited Samantha and her family. A Creative Learning Centre (CLC)* has been set up in the community and both girls were invited to join at no cost to them.

While at the CLC, the girls attended catch-up education classes, and were empowered with livelihood skills like baking, making candles and liquid soap. As a result, they started selling these goods in their community to supplement their grandmother’s income.

Samantha was able to save enough money to take her back to mainstream school so that she could finish her O-levels. Once in school, our learning support teachers and mentors work together with teachers to provide support to girls like Samantha. Mentors work closely with the schools, keeping track of the individual progress of each girl, as well as their attendance.

Samantha has always been passionate about teaching. After sitting her Senior 4 exams, she was employed as an English primary school teacher at a school in her community and, after her O-level results came through, she enrolled for a diploma in Early Childhood Development. Samantha continued teaching locally while attending college and her salary helped fund the course.

She took on a teaching job at Goshem Christian primary school, a CRANE member. While there, she began a journey of self-discovery. Besides teaching, Samantha had another passion. Throughout her school life, she had held different leadership roles. She knew that many young people in her community, particularly girls, faced lots of problems and yet often had no advocates.

Samantha decided her community needed her. At the beginning of 2021 she contested as a Youth Councillor in her community – and emerged the winner. She has now been sworn into office for the next five years. Samantha wants to empower other girls with self-confidence so that they too can tap into opportunities and achieve their dreams.

Among the many things that Samantha will be doing are counselling youth, representing their interests and ensuring the effective implementation of the National Youth Council Act and the National Youth Policy. She has ambitions to be speaker of the house at the subcounty level.

She hopes that five years from now she will be councillor and, in ten years, a female member of parliament for her district.

As for Samantha’s sister, Sara, she completed her O-levels, was also enrolled into an Early Childhood Development college and she is now a nursery teacher.

“This girls’ education programme has made me and my sister what we are today. It has been such an encouragement and source of hope. It has also boosted my communication skills and self-esteem. It has given us another chance at education so that we can realise our dreams. The training in livelihood skills taught us to work and to save and go back to school. To date we still live off the skills we were taught from the CLC. My sister and grandmother still bake doughnuts and sell to supplement our income.” (Samantha)

Article by Annah Tusiime, Senior Administrator with Viva Africa

*Creative Learning Centres are run by Viva and CRANE in partnership with the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. They are part of our seven-year Girls’ Education Challenge programme in Kampala.