Kenneth Kasule of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, made a special trip overseas to visit the Ottawa Valley to spread word of his progress in building the Central Uganda Academy. He is joined by Dave Clark of the Eganville Rotary Club, who helped share the news to several area churches.

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Eganville – Born and raised in Kampala, Uganda, Kenneth Kasule started working for his education before most kids can tie their own shoes or speak in full sentences. At the age of three, he hauled wood six days a week in exchange for his kindergarten tuition. Now a father of four, he’s doing everything he can to provide that same opportunity to his children free of the hardship and strife he experienced growing up.

Mr. Kasule is the director of Wide Smiles for All Through Education, an organization he founded that’s provided scholarships and supported the academic success of over 600 Ugandan children in the past two decades. It actively assists 119 students from primary school to university.

He made the trip overseas to share the news of his latest project aimed at transforming education: the Central Uganda Academy. He recently stopped by the Leader accompanied by Dave Clark of the Eganville Rotary Club, to share his compelling life experience. Mr. Kasule explained the state of education in Uganda is a multi-generational crisis and continues to present several significant challenges.

“I have to take children to many different schools where their goals in education can be realized because schools are not well facilitated to cater for these children’s ambitions,” Mr. Kasule explained. “In some of these schools where I teach, their parents or guardians have never been, and that means essentially that it has to be me (breaking the cycle).”

Mr. Kasule said the realization led him to the dream today, to establish the Central Uganda Academy and adjacent Carrier Centre, which he promised would teach a wide variety of practical hard skills.

“For the papacy of instilling the spirit of learning by doing, we are attaching an elementary to this,” he continued.

Mr. Kasule said Uganda has designed its education system with white-collar office jobs in mind as opposed to blue-collar work in the skilled trades.

“We see that it’s not working. We want these children to learn through elementary that gaining skills, having practical skills is the way to go.”

He added that as a developing country, there’s no financial assistance whatsoever, meaning students must pay tuition for their studies from kindergarten through to primary, secondary and tertiary education. Attending class can also be quite physically demanding and having transportation is a great privilege as most students can’t even afford things like shoes despite having to walk great distances to get to class.

Mr. Kasule said he not only spent hours carrying logs after class in exchange for the right to study but also had to travel six miles to and from school every day. Mr. Clark shared an anecdote on Mr. Kasule’s behalf, from when he was asked to teach a class of 90 students as practice for his degree in education.

“You can imagine, I mean, Canadian teachers would freak. He’s prepared his lesson for 90 students and as he begins to teach, in comes the school administrator,” Mr. Clark told the Leader. “He starts weeding out the kids who had not paid their tuition. And of the 90 students, he was left with seven. That’s how vicious of a system it is. Kids are clamouring for an education.”

The Dream

As a new branch of the Wide Smiles for All Through Education foundation, which Mr. Kasule has dubbed “the dream,” he aims to continue providing scholarships while constructing a skills training centre from the ground up.

He explained that one day, about 10 years ago, he envisioned plans for a centre for skills training that would provide unheard-of opportunities for local students and serve as a foundation for an improved state of education.

The future site of the Central Uganda Academy has been progressing over the past decade and has come quite far since then. Mr. Clark elaborated on the work Mr. Kasule has put into launching the vocational training centre.

“First you acquire the land to build it on, and that was a challenge. Then you acquire the title from the government, then you get the architects in to draw the pictures. This has all been done,” he explained. “So, now it’s a matter of starting to build.”

Mr. Clark explained that Mr. Kasule hasn’t just been sitting idly by while things fall into place, but quite the opposite, saying he’s put a lot of work into the project over the past decade and pulled strings to make it happen.

“Kenneth, by the way, he’s not just here with his hand out looking for money,” he said. “Some years ago, money was pooled together, land was purchased and he began farming.”

Mr. Kasule clarified that they first started stocking their plantation with maize (corn) before branching out into cassava (yuca), potatoes, tomatoes and plantains. This year, they’ve dug holes out of the ground by hand to cultivate 3,000 coffea plants, the seeds of which are later roasted and ground into coffee.

“Some of that profit then goes into next year’s crop and some goes into the charity,” Mr. Clark added. “It’s just amazing. This man and what he does is absolutely amazing.”

Mr. Kasule said he and his team at Wide Smiles for All Through Education have made excellent progress since they started making “the dream” come true.

“This dream has been going through some requirements. Having the architecture done, being approved by the fiscal and planning committees back in the country and having to have a permit to start operating an education institution,” Mr. Kasule continued.

He elaborated on some of the challenges they’ve faced, like a storm that wiped out half of the plantation and a drought that greatly diminished the crop’s value. “Sometimes those degradations we’re experiencing fluctuate the market very sharply. But we keep trying,” he added.

So far, Wide Smiles for All Through Education has moulded and fired over 70,000 bricks to start building the academy, but materials are just the beginning of several hoops Mr. Kasule has jumped through to bring it all to life. He said like any major project, the dream was slowed by bureaucracy and red tape.

Now that they’re through with the formalities, Mr. Kasule said they’re looking for the resources they can’t facilitate for themselves, like concrete and labour. He said the first finished building will accommodate up to 420 students and include all the required administrative offices.

“According to our engineer, it is going to require about 100,000 bricks, and over 70,000 have been done. If we start in the next two to three months, we’ll have all the bricks needed for this building.”