Soft Power Education

Soft Power Education (SPE) is a British registered charity and a Ugandan NGO. SPE was founded in 1997 with a focus on improving education in Uganda.

Vision: An empowered and self sustaining society taking responsibility for its own development.

Mission: To improve quality of life through education.

• Education
  
• Disability
• Livelihoods

We work in both Jinja and Buliisa districts building, renovating and painting classrooms and staff houses at government primary schools.

Since the introduction of Universal Primary Education in Uganda in 1999 pupil to classroom ratios have expanded at an exponetial rate. SPE works to combat the negative effects that occur from the over-crowding of classrooms by working in collaboration with the local government to provide insipring workspaces that are conducive to productive learning.

We run a number of programmes that focus on providing alternative forms of education, supplementing the programmes currently provided by the mainstream curriculum:

The AEC is an awe-insipiring building in the heart of Bujugali village. It provides the base from which P6 pupils from our partner schools come and learn invaluable life skills such as family planning and malaria prevention. The pupils are encouraged to explore these life skills through a variety of interactive lessons such as art, drama, ICT, agriculture and library workshops, that may not be available within their curriculum, or which their school may not have the resources to provide.

The pupils get the chance to show off what they have learned in our annual schools festivals, where all our schools compete in a range of events, testing their knowledge of each area that they have been focusing on.

Pre-Schools

We operate two pre schools for orphans and vulnerable chilren. Our pre-schools provide an fantastic environment for children to learn and develop skills essential to their successful progression on to the first stage of primary education.

Disability remains highly stigmatised within Uganda. Our SEN programme is working to improve understanding and acceptance of children with disabilities in local communities.

To promote the inclusion and understanding of disability we operate a number of outreach clinics. At these clinics we provide physical therapy, occupational therapy and education programmes for children with both physical and mental disabilities. In addition to this we run and support two residential care units, conduct disability awareness days, and run after-school art and sports clubs.

We believe that the best way to promote sustainability is to operate programmes that not only inform people, creating a wider knowledge, but programmes which have a direct benefit to the livelihoods of our participants.

Working with communities in Buliisa District, which has a long border with Murchison Falls National Park, P&P aims to improve the relationship between communities and the national park and improve natural resource management by implementing practical conservation solutions, training groups to develop environmentally-friendly income generating projects and providing start-up grants to kick off these projects. To date P&P has initiated a wide variety of income generating projects - all identified by the communities - from bee-keeping to sheep and pig rearing to mango growing.

Amagezi Education Centre (AEC) Community Development Programme

Alongside our pupils project we run a tandem programme for the parents and also the community members of the pupils involved. We believe that by involving all generations of the family in the learning process change will be longer lasting as it will come from a collective understanding.