By Charles Bwanika

My name is Bwanika Charles from Uganda “the Pearl of Africa” as proclaimed by the war time British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill in his 1908 published book “My African Journey”.

When I was admitted into the YALI program in that historical Cohort 23 which saw the centre clocking to 2000 Alumni by then I had one main intention and I wasn’t certain that the program would offer the answer of my yearning and my main intention was, I only wanted to discover my niche in going about the community transformation work that I started as a teenage way back in 2008 when I visited a Prison cell in Dokolo District as a research assistant with one of the consultancy firm in Winsor Consult Ltd that had been contracted to offer consultancy services in unifying the local government prisons with central government prisons.

My journey of the work that I do now started in a prison cell not as a prisoner but as an observer of the unfairness on the children that were born to female inmates ending up growing in prisons not as convicted prisoners but because they were born to prison inmates, my passion for supporting children especially the underprivileged children started there, a couple of years later that’s 2010 to be exact I cofounded a civil society organisation in Giving Children Hope Initiative (GCHI) https://web.facebook.com/GivingChildrenHopeInitiative/ with a like minded friend, 7years later the organization had reached out to hundreds and hundreds of young people in different corners of Uganda with several community empowerment programs like Girl Child Mission, DDPO Program and most vividly our initiated community school in Hope Children’s School  https://web.facebook.com/Hopechildrenzschool/ which has supported 1,382 children since it’s inception in 2013 and currently supporting 322 children with it’s main campus in Mityana District, Central Uganda. When i landed onto this YALI RLC Application on social media in the closing months of 2017 i decided to give it a go. 

Having done all this and many other things prior the YALI experience guess what it’s from my Design Thinking class at the centre where I discovered my niche and now am piloting a teaching model that will be targeting rural and primary schools in hard to reach areas of Uganda i developed this model with the design thinking concept it's called “Evidence Based Teaching Model” (EBTeM) in a bid to improve and promote quality education in line with SDG4 Ensure Inclusive - Equitable Quality Education I developed the EBTeM to engage rural primary school teachers in Uganda.

My model is out to inspire teachers always to engage learners with new innovative ways using the available data, ideas and stories (DIS). The model is unique in away that it aims at equipping teachers in rural schools of Uganda with 21st century techniques, use of modern portable technology devices with a design thinking approach in relation with their local communities so as to create effective and efficient learning environment and also spark off the learners critical thinking impulses  at an early age. The pilot phase is already on at my cofounded Hope Children’s School and the results are promising, 

PHOTO: Bwanika Charles facilitating an evidence based lesson at Hope Children's School

hoping to scale it out soon. Experiencing the YALI experience from the reality side

https://web.facebook.com/bwanika.charles.5