Last week, the Tony Little Centre, Africa and Caribbean Society, Education Society and the Social Impact Society welcomed Ronnie Katzler and Lynne Pritchard, directors of Redearth Education, an NGO based in Masindi, Uganda.
Redearth provides teacher and leadership training at rural government primary schools in Uganda, focusing on the least resourced. They currently train approximately 1,200 teachers across 130 schools, which educate around 60,000 pupils.
Katzler and Pritchard explained the challenges they’ve faced, from founding Redearth in 2006 to making their work sustainable long-term. They discussed their work on literacy, on which their training focuses. They emphasised the importance of engaging with local cultures over many years for NGO work to be successful.
Reflecting on the importance of sustainability, Katzler advised, “In the NGO world, don’t ever undertake projects where if you were to cease continuing the project, it would cease to continue altogether”.
We’d like to thank Ronnie Katzler and Lynne Pritchard very much for their inspiring and insightful talk.
The founders of Redearth Education, Ronnie Katzler and Lynne Pritchard, proposed an interesting dilemma: how do you attempt to educate a country where almost 50% of the population are between the ages of 0-14 and there is a severe lack of government funding in the education sector?
Redearth are trying to tackle this very real problem in Uganda, where they are working to provide teacher and leadership training at rural government primary schools, focusing on the least resourced schools. They explained the outdated African education system and showed us the new ways of teaching which engaged the students more. We even took part in an activity called an ‘energiser’ which a typical Ugandan student would take part in one of their schools, a new experience that everyone enjoyed.
