In the quiet of her mother’s mud-brick bedroom in Namutidde village, Mityana District, Uganda, 11-year-old Alice Mbatudde awakens on the morning of 7 August to the crowing of a rooster. She tosses aside her blanket and swings her feet to the floor, shuffling over to her small table to light the lamp. This hour usually finds most children still fast asleep, but Alice is wide awake with her first spelling bee competition just hours away. She seizes the morning’s quiet to study while the rest of her family sleeps.
Later that day, Alice will join 79 other primary school students in her district to compete in a spelling bee and reading competition organized by Building Tomorrow Fellows and the local government. Organizers created the competition as a creative way to promote foundational literacy among children in the district.
Roots to Rise meets the challenge
Alice was not always the kind of child who would wake up early to practice for a literacy competition. At the beginning of the 2026 academic year at Namutidde Primary School, she was quiet and reserved, rarely raising her hand in class or even playing with other children. Due to crowded classrooms and her reluctance to participate, Alice’s teachers had difficulty determining what was holding her back and helping her reach her potential.
Alice’s transformation began earlier this year. With the support of Building Tomorrow Fellow Martha Nandawula and Community Education Volunteer Shakirah Nakamanya, Alice enrolled in Shakirah’s Roots to Rise (R2R) community camp in March, Building Tomorrow’s signature remedial foundational learning program. Shakirah assessed Alice’s reading and writing abilities and determined she was at Roots to Rise literacy Level 1 — able to recognize individual letters and sounds, but not yet able to blend them into words.
By the end of the 40 contact hours of R2R camp, Alice had shown remarkable progress, advancing to Level 3 in literacy. Still, she had not reached the proficiency level required for her grade — the ability to read and comprehend stories. So when the school term began, Martha worked with Alice’s teacher, Rosemary Nalukwago, to enroll her in an R2R camp at her school. By the end of the camp, Alice had reached the minimum proficiency level for her grade in literacy.
Spelling bee success!
Fast forward to August 7, by mid-morning of the spelling bee, Mityana District’s headquarters is loud with the buzz of 80 children. When Alice’s turn comes to compete, she steps forward. The girl who had never raised her hand now stands in front of the room, reads each passage aloud, and spells word after word in a confident, unwavering voice.
With each round, the field narrows. And when the last word is called and the scores are counted, it is Alice who is the winner! Alice received her trophy (along with a goat for her school) and, with a beaming smile, embraced her teacher with pride. She also won bragging rights as the first girl to win in the competition’s three-year history!
The skills that carried her from R2R Level 1 to the spelling bee stage—learning and blending sounds, decoding words, and learning to read paragraphs with fluency and comprehension—were the exact foundational skills the competition set out to test. Alice did not just learn to read with R2R; she mastered these skills and set herself apart from her peers.
Not so long ago, Alice was the quiet girl at the back of the class, invisible behind her uncertainty. Today, she is a district champion, proof that with the right support, every child can dream!
