In the cool shadow of a sun-baked brick home in Misigi, a rural village in Mityana District, Central Uganda, Suzan Naluyima, a Building Tomorrow Community Education Volunteer (CEV), arranges her most essential tools: a well-used syllable chart and a stack of handmade flashcards. She prepares to teach a Roots to Rise (R2R) community camp in her makeshift backyard “classroom,” which comprises pupils from around her village. For nine-year-old Jenifer, one of the students, this patch of shade in her neighbor’s backyard represents hope as she works to overcome an education reality all too common for children across sub-Saharan Africa: the inability to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10.
In school, Jenifer is taught at her age level rather than her true learning level. This left her slipping through the cracks and falling behind her peers. While other students in her class demonstrated Primary 3 competencies, such as reading a paragraph, Jenifer struggled to recognize basic letters or combine sounds to form words. This discrepancy left Jenifer feeling isolated and increasingly disconnected from classroom learning. Her silence and withdrawal were not signs of disinterest, rather age-appropriate responses to receiving instruction on material far beyond her abilities.
During a R2R literacy camp, Jenifer participates in “Letter Jump,” an interactive literacy activity designed to strengthen foundational reading skills, particularly letter recognition, phonemic awareness, and word formation.
When Jenifer’s Primary 3 Term 1 exam results confirmed the growing gap between her academic understanding and that of her peers, Jenifer’s teacher grew concerned. To provide Jenifer remedial support, her teacher reached out to Building Tomorrow Cohort 10 Fellow, Gloria Nakalema, and, together with Suzan, helped enroll her in R2R.
R2R is Building Tomorrow’s Teaching at the Right Level-inspired intervention designed to group children by learning level rather than age. It is designed for both school and community settings, and provides learners with remedial support. The program incorporates social-emotional learning and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) techniques to create a supportive, inclusive, and accessible learning environment where each child can progress at their own pace. Over the course of 40 hours, CEVs conduct R2R camps in community spaces, places of worship, or even in the shade of their own backyards, like Suzan’s, while R2R-trained teachers conduct school-based camps throughout the school week. Regardless of the camp’s locale, R2R improves learning outcomes for children who are left behind in the traditional education system. After completing a R2R camp, nearly 65% of learners reach grade-level literacy proficiency (up from just 10% at baseline), and about 61% reach grade-level numeracy proficiency (up from 11% at baseline).
Jenifer participates in partner reading with a peer, where they take turns as “reader” and “listener.” This UDL strategy helps develop literacy skills by providing peer support, active engagement, and immediate feedback, allowing learners to practice fluency, comprehension, and pronunciation.
After completing her baseline assessment and being placed at R2R literacy Level 1, Jenifer started attending Suzan’s backyard community camp in the evenings after the school day. The shift in teaching method and supplemental instruction changed everything for Jenifer. Within three weeks, she progressed from literacy Level 1 to Level 3, moving from barely recognizing basic sounds to reading short sentences with growing confidence. But the academic gains only told half the story. The child who once avoided eye contact in her school classroom was now eagerly raising her hand to read. “[Before R2R], she wouldn’t even touch the book,” her teacher observed, “but [after R2R], she was helping other children sound out words.” When Term 2 began at school, Jenifer walked back into her classroom transformed, not as the quiet and unsure student she’d been, but as an engaged learner equipped to succeed alongside her peers.
Jenifer is one of 40 children in Mityana that CEV Suzan and Gloria have enrolled in R2R this year. Their work forms part of the broader efforts of Building Tomorrow’s Community Education Teams, which have reached nearly 350,000 children with R2R in 2025 and more than 900,000 since the start of the program. It is thanks to the dedication and passion of people like Gloria and Suzan that Jenifer and hundreds of thousands of other children across rural East Africa can read, write, and do basic math. We are proud to work alongside these champions of education in our effort to ensure literacy and numeracy for all children.
