After school program
It had rained heavily prior to start of the after school program held at Center C. I had spoken with the one of the center’s after school volunteers earlier that day. He invited me to visit the program but cautioned that the rainy conditions would likely deter children from coming. Similar to the center’s breakfast program, children are often left with a difficult choice on rainy days: venture out into the cold downpour (often without shoes) or to stay home where they will be dry … and remain hungry.
The program has a reported starting time of 3pm. Keeping with Ugandan culture norms, I arrived “early” at 4:15 to find three children waiting for the program to begin. While we were waiting for others to arrive, the children and I had a paper airplane throwing contest until the volunteer arrived at around 5pm. He explained that the program takes place each day, Monday through Friday within the container that houses the breakfast program. The volunteer works to assist children with their homework from grades Primary 1 through Primary 7, where he assists in helping children study all subjects from English to algebra to learning numbers and letters. With the wide age range of children, the volunteer explained that he typically begins helping the older grade levels by setting them up with some homework problems relevant to their current studies and then helps them answers questions. He systematically works down to grades Primary 1, and then checks in with the older children again.
While attendance is taken, children voluntarily attend their after school program to receive additional help with their homework. At school, classroom sizes are impersonally large, and the volunteer commented that the NFSC after school program provides a chance for a child to receive some genuine one-on-one help from the volunteer, something rarely afforded in the context of a government sponsored Universal Primary Education (UPE) school. A quick head count revealed that 20 children had arrived by the time the volunteer arrived (most without shoes), despite the drizzly and muddy conditions. I commented on the surprisingly large number of children who showed up to work on homework, and he shrugged, “This was small. I normally work with thirty.”
In terms of the availability of physical materials, the program appeared to have an adequate paper supply today, but they lacked nearly everything else. Children brought their own pencils to the session, most of which were “pinky length” and quite dull. Also, most children did not have worksheets or things of that nature; rather, the volunteer would create a handwritten page of math problems, for example, and in the absence of a photocopy machine, the children performed this function by gathering around to copy the problems onto their own sheet of paper. As the hours passed, the children continued to work diligently on their English, math, and science homework, striving to subsidize what is often an insufficient education. With one small window, the light in Center C gradually faded with the sun. It was time to go home.
