Powering Community Education Teams: Working Together to End Learning Poverty in Uganda

• In Event: Learning Teams for Foundational Learning: A Collaborative Approach to Ensure Every Child Can Thrive in an Increasingly Complex World

Proposal

Community Education Teams have reached over half a million learners across rural Uganda with a local organisation’s Roots to Rise (R2R) foundational literacy and numeracy camps, cutting learning poverty for more than three-quarters of learners engaged. A vital component of these teams are Community Education Volunteers (CEVs), local residents of the communities the organisation serves and the heart of a community-powered model. CEVs are mobilized by Fellows from the local organisation —dynamic Ugandan university graduates—and work alongside other community members, teachers, school leadership, and local officials to enhance community-led education in the rural areas we serve. To date, the local organisation has recruited over 14,000 CEVs and has 800 Community Education Teams active in 2024.

CEVs have been at work in Uganda since 2015, when the organisaiton’s Fellows identified the need for additional support to reach more children and to put the community at the core of the solution to ensure lasting impact. CEVs became grassroots education extension agents, and this model was further adapted during COVID-19, when Uganda faced the longest school closures globally. CEVs were able to ensure children still had access to learning in safe, outdoor settings through what we call community camps.

Prior to schools closing in Uganda, more than 83% of primary school-aged learners, approximately 7.3M children, lacked foundational learning skills (World Bank, 2019). Without the ability to read, write, and do basic math, these learners are less likely to advance to the next grade level and more likely to drop out of school, impeding academic success and limiting prospects for future employment. CEVs served as a safeguard for access to educational opportunities, even in the face of school closures, and continue to play a critical role post-COVID, expanding the corps of trained instructors who can lead R2R lessons.

The efficacy of our CEVs at delivering high-quality lessons was demonstrated in a multi-country randomized controlled trial (RCT) by Youth Impact, which found that just 160 minutes of phone-based lessons delivered by CEVs led to learning gains equivalent to 1.1 learning-adjusted years of schooling (NBER, 2023).

CEVs help mobilize their communities around education and multiply the community assets toward education. Together with local stakeholders, these implementers facilitate R2R literacy and numeracy lessons, enroll out-of-school children in school, build the capacity of school leadership, and champion inclusivity. CEVs have proven to be an impactful intervention and have the potential to be a valuable solution for communities looking to center local voices and support more learners.

Author

• Luke Tyburski, Building Tomorrow