In the tucked-away village of Bulyansime, on the outskirts of Bugweri District in Eastern Uganda, a group of learners gather under a tree for their Roots to Rise camp at Bulyansime Primary School on a sunny afternoon in October 2024. With faces alight with excitement and concentration, they work together to arrange cards — each inscribed with a letter of the alphabet — into words, and then sentences on the ground.
Their guide, 29-year-old Gerald, is a Roots to Rise-trained teacher. He stands at the back, helping to guide the students to work collaboratively. Occasionally, Gerald moves among the learners as they arrange their letter cards on the ground, providing gentle instruction and encouragement. Nearby, a group of learners is working to finish their newly constructed sentences while their peers offer suggestions. Such creativity and teamwork are standard in Building Tomorrow’s Roots to Rise camps, where 87% of learners improve by at least one level in literacy and/or numeracy by the end of the 40-contact-hour camp cycle.
Earlier this year, Babirye (pictured below) was diagnosed with an illness that kept her out of school for almost two months. When she returned, she found school to be daunting — particularly when it came to reading, sounding out words, and forming sentences — and struggled to keep up with her classmates. This not only caused her to lose joy in learning, but it also made her consider dropping out of school.
Her teacher, Gerald, noticed Babirye’s challenges and assessed her to determine her reading level using Building Tomorrow’s Roots to Rise assessment tool. He discovered that while she could identify some words and sound out a few others, she found it challenging to construct meaningful sentences. This indicated to Gerald that Babirye was at Roots to Rise Level Two in her proficiency skills and would benefit from remedial Roots to Rise instruction, leading him to enroll her in the next camp cycle.
As part of the Roots to Rise program, Babirye and other learners like her receive teaching tailored to their individual learning needs. Inspired by the Teaching at the Right Level methodology, Building Tomorrow’s Roots to Rise program groups learners by their current abilities and skill level rather than by age or grade, ensuring that each child is taught at the right pace and level to help them learn and progress. Moreover, Roots to Rise incorporates social-emotional learning components as well as Universal Design for Learning techniques to promote an inclusive learning environment.
Babirye continues to attend her first Roots to Rise camp and while midline assessments have not yet been conducted, Gerald has noticed significant improvements in Babirye’s literacy skills after only four camp sessions in Roots to Rise.
“Babirye can now read more words and construct longer sentences. Her grades in class have also improved significantly,” Gerald notes.
Roots to Rise has supported hundreds of thousands of learners like Babirye in developing strong literacy skills. Since the beginning of 2024, Building Tomorrow’s Community Education Teams have reached over 275,000 children through literacy and numeracy camps — both in schools and communities — and more than 500,000 since 2022.
As a result of her remedial learning in Roots to Rise, Babirye is performing better in school and studying hard to achieve her dream of going to medical school one day. She hopes to become a nurse to support her family and provide healthcare for her community.
