In rural Uganda, most children arrive at primary school having never sat in a quality pre-primary class. Where early childhood centres do exist, they are often poorly equipped and staffed by caregivers who have had little or no training in how young children actually learn. Our Early Childhood Education programme works to change that, by equipping the caregivers who teach Uganda’s youngest learners.

At the heart of the programme is caregiver training. We train pre-primary caregivers in holistic child development, so they can nurture the whole child: socially, emotionally, physically, and cognitively. We ground them in foundational literacy and numeracy, showing them how to build early reading and number skills from a child’s very first years. And we equip them with play-based, learner-centred methods that meet children where they are and make learning something children look forward to. Because good materials are scarce in rural classrooms, we also train caregivers to make their own engaging teaching and learning aids from low-cost, locally available resources.

Training on its own rarely changes a classroom, so we do not stop at the workshop. Our team returns to the centres for continuous mentorship and support, observing lessons, coaching caregivers through the challenges they meet, and helping them put new methods into practice until they become second nature.

The impact is often deeply personal. As one pre-primary teacher told us:

“I’ve taught pre-primary for four years, and this year was going to be my last. I was going to quit, because for four years I struggled to interpret the ECD framework and teach these young children, and no one could help or guide me. This training has helped me so much. I now understand how to teach young children, and I can’t wait for the term to begin so I can take these skills into my class.”

Through this programme, we are making sure a child’s very first experience of school is one that sets them up to thrive, not one that leaves them behind before they have even begun.