School for Life is committed to ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of our students and families in Uganda as COVID-19 continues to impact our communities.
Here’s how our team are reaching more villagers during the second wave of the pandemic.
As part of our efforts to keep our communities safe, SFL has conducted a range of activities to arm students and their families with the information and resources they need to stay safe during the pandemic and prevent further transmission of the virus.
With the second wave of COVID-19 hitting Uganda very hard in May this year, once again forcing our students to stay home, our Community & Welfare Team planned to do more for the community at large with the hope to mitigate the possibility of transmission from village members to our students during the time of school closures and as their families went about their day to day lives.
During the month of July, SFL partnered with the Ugandan police and local leaders to conduct an awareness campaign to provide the wider community with the information they needed to protect themselves from COVID-19.
Using a PA system set up on the back of one of our school vehicles, our wonderful SFL team shared information and advice to community members in 22 local villages where our students live, to help them stay safe from COVID-19. With the largest village home to 10,000 and the smallest village with a population of 2,000, our Community & Welfare Team reached an audience of approximately 132,000 people.
Whilst over 1800 education pamphlets in the local language were handed out, encouraging hand washing, wearing face masks and social distancing amongst other COVID-19 preventative measures, by far the most effective method was spreading the word via the PA system as the majority of community members in the rural areas that we operate in are illiterate.
Community members were educated on preventative measures against COVID-19 as well as the myths and misconceptions of the virus.
As the campaign was conducted in two parts, a few weeks apart, it was heartening to hear reports from our team that community members had indeed taken onboard their message and advice! The team shared with us that on their second round of COVID-19 Community Outreach, they had noticed some villagers had installed make-shift hand washing stations at their properties and more were starting to wear masks and observe social distancing, which was vastly different to what they had observed the first time around.
More villagers were starting to wear face masks in public areas as a result of the COVID-19 Community Outreach drive conducted by our team.
School for Life continues to seek out further ways in which we can keep all our School for Life students, their families and the community at large safe and healthy while remaining focused in our core mission to educate poverty out of existence.
More updates on our communities and School for Life’s work to keep them safe in these challenging times will be made available soon.
In the meantime, we thank each and every one of our SFL supporters for their compassion and kindness – your support is invaluable to our students and their families, now more than ever before.
If you would like to help us continue making a difference in the lives of our students, their families and the wider community, you can support our programs by making a donation here.
