Across the world, over 90% of children with disabilities do not attend school. To tackle this problem in Uganda, we teamed up with our partners USDC, to implement an Inclusive Education Project using an innovative Child to Child approach.
This project, which started in 2013 works to address the multiple barriers that prevent children with disabilities going to school.
Using the Child to Child approach, children already attending school are encouraged to identify and engage with out-of-school children with disabilities in their communities. Together with teachers, they identify barriers to exclusion, and work with schools and communities to ensure that children with disabilities are in education, and importantly stay in school.
In 2016, we scaled up the project and are now working with 27 schools across three districts (Lira, Adjumani and Nebbi) over the next 5 years. This scale-up, supported by Comic Relief, is enabling us and USDC to get over 1,500 children with disabilities into school.
To maximise this impact and ensure lasting change, we are scaling up our local and national advocacy with USDC alongside this programme, working alongside the Ministry of Education, UNICEF and other key stakeholders to secure the national roll-out of inclusive education guidelines and training for teachers across Uganda.
