LSP student Pamela sings at a student gathering to kick off the new school year.
With this week marking the beginning of the 2013 school year in Uganda, the secondary students in Invisible Children Uganda’s Legacy Scholarship Program (LSP) shared what they have been up to for the past two months while on holiday.
“Over the weekends I have been weeding potatoes at Kirombe, while weekdays are strictly reserved for revision since I am in my final year of secondary school and I want to make it to the university to study accounting,” says Stella, a student at Sacred Heart School.
Agnes of Gulu High School spent her holiday back at home in Omoro doing something she is talented in: plaiting hair. “I plaited all hair styles from pencil to dreadlock. I also love to read. In my free time I read books like The Bride by Austin Bukenya and my favorite, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist,” she says.
Denis, a student at Anaka Secondary School, was particularly ambitious. ”This holiday I learnt how to make charcoal used for cooking food, something I had never known, and this really made me proud of myself. So was my grandmother who I stay with, I also helped her with harvesting peas, groundnuts and built a hut for her at our home in Alero Nwoya district. It was a holiday of achieving big, and now I want to achieve good grades at school,” says Denis.
In addition to catching up on reading and helping out at home during school holidays, the students were visited by their LSP mentors. Mentors carry out home visits to follow up on students’ progress at home and mentor them with the support of parents or guardians.
The LSP provides merit-based scholarships and mentoring to motivated and talented secondary and university students from northern Uganda who were affected by the LRA conflict. Through increased access to secondary, university, and vocational education, as well as mentoring, the program is educating the next generation of leaders in northern Uganda.
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