At Impact Community Foundation (ICF)
we create education opportunities for marginalized children and youths in Uganda through:
- Building low-cost, not-for-profit schools in rural Uganda: These schools use a highly sustainable and innovative model where they create a scholarship position for a deserving but marginalised girl for every five paying students enrolled. This is enabling marginalised girls who otherwise never be able to go to school to get high quality education
- A sustainable clean cooking-fuel project: ICF invented simple technology that can be used to convert locally sourced organic waste into clean cooking fuel as an alternative to fuel-wood. ICF used this technology to empower groups of marginalised women in Uganda to launch village-based clean energy enterprises converting local organic waste into clean cooking fuel. This helps to bring clean cooking fuel to marginalised communities in Uganda, creates sustainable jobs for some of the poorest women on the planet, reduces deforestation, indoor air pollution and eliminates the need for poor girls to miss school to walk arduous distances to gather fuel-wood
The above two approaches solve both supply and demand problems that deny millions of poor children a chance to get an education like:
| On the demand side: | On the supply side: |
|---|---|
| The energy project enables beneficiary mothers to pay school fees for their children hence eliminating the cost obstacle | The schools built bring schools closer to marginalised communities. In some of these communities, kids had to walk up to 20 miles a day to access a school |
| It also eliminates the need to withdraw marginalised girls from school to gather fuel-wood. Therefore, marginalised girls are enabled to consistently attend school which improves their learning and reduces school dropouts | The scholarships for girls enable girls who can’t be reached through the energy project to get an education |
| It reduces indoor air pollution which reduces incidences of marginalised girls missing school because of respiratory illnesses. Air pollution, according to a landmark new study, kills more people than malaria and HIV/Aids combined | Our schools are also significantly cheaper than even public schools of equal quality. Therefore, enabling more children to afford high quality education |
| It also reduces child marriages because parents are not forced by poverty to prematurely marry-off their daughters in exchange of gifts or money. This allows girls to stay in school longer | Our online education is also reaching marginalised children and youths that are out-of-school or those who for any reason are not able to benefit from brick and mortar traditional schools |
| It also enables marginalised families to cook consistent meals which enables marginalised school children to eat food at home before they go to school |