Our School

Project Shelter Wakadogo is a nursery and primary school in northern Uganda. Wakadogo, meaning 'for the little ones' in Swahili, was founded in 2006 by a group of volunteers in the UK and Canada. At this time, northern Uganda was coming out of 23 years of civil war. The school opened in 2009 in a remote, rural village called Acoyo on the outskirts of Gulu town. This was the first school to provide quality education to the girls and boys living in this community.

The school currently serves 450 girls and boys who would normally be out of school because of poverty, lack of schools and rural remoteness. Their families simply cannot afford the fees and hidden costs of going to other schools, including government schools.

Currently the school provides:

• A safe, child-friendly environment focused on high quality, affordable, gender-sensitive education for the most vulnerable and hard to reach children
• Nutritional school meals to ensure children come to school and learn on full stomachs
• Free basic medical care, for common illnesses such as malaria
• Sports and music programmes which helps keep children in school and not drop out
• Free education for vulnerable children such as orphans, children from single-parent households or child-headed households or large families where there is an average of 5 children
• Free day care for teaching and school staff whose children are too young to attend school as this allows the team to focus on their work knowing that their little ones are safe and cared for