Featured Project

Club Project

The Peace and Literacy (PAL) Computer Project

Sixteen years after the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency, Northern Uganda and, in particular the Acholi region, remains relatively poor and with some of the lowest social indicators. Approximately 32.5 per cent of its population is living below the poverty line compared to the national average of 21 per cent as in 2019 year.

Northern Uganda is behind the rest of the country in terms of health indicators, household sanitation coverage, pupil to classroom ratios, and lower proportions of pupils with adequate sitting and writing space. Access to economic opportunities and basic services remains highly uneven and hence the high unemployment rates, particularly in the more remote localities.

Paimol sub-county is one of those areas which is further behind because of its poor road network and accessibility which has constrained access to basic services. For example, 40.2 per cent of the households in this sub-county do not have access to safe water and 63 per cent have to walk more than 5km to the nearest health centre. (UBOS, 2014).

Despite the challenges that the community of Paimol sub-county experienced, the people remain admirably resilient, and in 2003 they built a school; Akwang Secondary School, to provide secondary education for their children. The community was adopted by the Rotary Club of Kampala-Naalya in 2014. It is one of those that were devastated by the two-decade-long rebellion by the Lord's Resistance Army, which severely hit social services in the region. Schools were destroyed, throwing hundreds of children out of school.

Today, Akwang Secondary School remains the only secondary school in Paimol sub-county. Unfortunately, because of limited resources, the quality of education provided is wanting. Although it has a population of more than 650 learners, the school has less than 12 properly constructed classrooms. The pupil – teacher ratio is also very high: 85:1, and in 2020, the school registered only two first grades in O’ level out of a class of 89 students.