“In the month of June, [Uganda] was hit by a deadly Covid’19 wave that forced us to halt for 2 weeks and assess how we would implement virtual classes as we did in 2020. As Elevate, we could not sit back and fold our hands with the lockdown on the horizon. We know that our young people can easily lose morale, give up on school and be forced to get into informal work to support their families. For most of them, that’s not the worst that can happen.
They fall back into petty theft and robbery, prostitution or work in precarious environments that expose them to drug abuse and unwanted pregnancies and early marriages. We could not afford to let them be idle, so we put in place distributed classrooms in the community spaced out through the week while practicing social distancing and Ministry of Health SOPs. Students are able to continue practicing their craft and learn from each other as they wait for the lockdown to be lifted.”