“They faced their fears, and it worked”
- Rose Frank
- Jul 8
- 4 min read
Girls in Uganda Use Art to Tackle Educational Barriers
Kihembe is the only secondary school in its sub-county, nestled in a rural corner of southwestern Uganda. It serves eight surrounding villages, and for many girls, it represents their only chance at continuing education beyond primary school. Before it opened eight years ago, the nearest options were boarding schools – too far and too expensive for most families.
“Most girls didn’t have a chance to continue with school,” recalls Winnie Ainembaabazi, a local mentor. “They didn’t have money to go to boarding school, and there was no day school around for them.”
Although Kihembe is the only secondary school in the region, the dropout rate for girls remains high, with most leaving school by age 14 or 15.
To address these challenges, Creative Action Institute partnered with Girl Power Foundation Uganda to bring our two-year Sauti ya Dada (which means ‘the girls’ voice’, in Kiswahili) program to the community. The program empowers girls in under-resourced areas to stay in school by helping them build confidence, develop leadership skills, and creatively advocate for their right to education.
The program is delivered in partnership with grassroots organizations, like Girl Power Foundation. Each partner selects a mentor to support implementation of the Sauti ya Dada Program. Women like Winnie are trained as mentors and lead monthly sessions with the girls.
In the first year, girls focus on building leadership skills, self-confidence, and forging strong peer connections.
In the second year, they take on a Creative Advocacy Practicum (CAP): a practical opportunity to apply all the skills from the first year to address barriers keeping girls from school. Through CAPs girls become researchers in their own communities, interviewing community members, comparing findings with their own experiences, and developing a hypothesis about the primary barrier to their education. They design a public campaign using art, storytelling, and performance to present their findings to their community and encourage change.
After interviewing community members and corroborating their findings, the girls in the Kihembe Sauti ya Dada club discovered that climate change was their primary barrier to education.
"Most families in the area rely on farming, and changing weather patterns have made harvests increasingly unreliable.” Winnie explains, “Due to the current change in climatic conditions, the seasons have changed. There’s more drought, more floods… this led to most of the crops not yielding enough." Without income from their farms, parents couldn’t pay school fees or afford basic necessities like menstrual products.
To bring attention to the issue, the girls organized a full day of community events. It began with an advocacy walk to the nearby town center, where they carried signs and chanted messages linking droughts to school dropout rates. By the time they returned, they had gathered a crowd that followed them back to the school, including headteachers, parents, parish chiefs, and other community leaders.
Then the girls performed a series of original skits based on their research that vividly illustrated how climate change is disrupting their education. One skit showed a family struggling to afford school fees after a poor harvest. Another showed a girl who couldn’t bathe due to a drought. When she came to school during her period and was teased by classmates, she dropped out. Some girls were nervous to perform the skit on menstrual hygiene, fearing it might be too uncomfortable for parents. But with encouragement from their peers, they decided to present it anyway.
“They faced their fears, and it worked,” Winnie said.
To her surprise, most parents stayed until the end. One mother who had planned to withdraw her daughter from school changed her mind after watching.
“I didn’t even know why my daughter was going to school,” she admitted. “I only saw the money she was taking from me.”
The day concluded with the unveiling of a mural the girls had spent three days designing and painting with a professional artist. It illustrates their vision of a sustainable community and the links between climate change and girls’ education. The mural continued to draw visitors long after the event, attracting school groups, church members, and local residents.
“The mural is creating impact,” Winnie said. “People are learning from it.”
Since then, the girls have performed their skits at churches across the region. They also launched an environmental club at school, where they grow vegetables and manage compost bins. The garden now supplements school meals, and they are exploring ways to sell extra produce to support education costs.
What began as a small initiative has grown into a movement. Boys have joined the club. Families are planting home gardens. Girls are not only teaching their peers, but also reinforcing sustainable practices at home.
“We are not just impacting the girls and their parents,” says Winnie. “Now it’s the entire community.”
-- Photos from the CAP below. Watch the full video here.
Recent photos of SYD girls tending the vegetable garden they planted at Kihembe Secondary School. Boys have joined the club, and they are distributing food to their classmates.
Thank you to our partners at Girl Power Foundation for your continued collaboration. Thank you Winnie for graciously taking the time to interview.
Written by Rose Frank.
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