On Saturday 28th July, 2018 the Department of Adult and Community Education conducted the first graduation of its Love Binti Project Trainees. A total of forty students were admitted for the June/July intake and a total of thirty-seven participants successfully completed the training leading to the award of Love Binti Certificate of Qualification. The participants were drawn from a variety of walks of life intended to increase the impact of Love Binti Project activities. The categories of participants included support and administrative staff from the College of Education and External Studies; Students of Makerere University from the College of Education and other Colleges; Students of YMCA Comprehensive Institute; Gospel Artists; Church leaders from surrounding community churches, and other Community Members.
The training comprised of three modules in the area of tailoring, reproductive health and menstrual hygiene and Entrepreneurship and life skills. Whereas the tailoring package aimed at helping participants learn to make good quality reusable sanitary pads, they were introduced to other design products and each, produced a skirt, dress and ten reusable sanitary pads as a requirement to graduate.
The graduation was graced by Dr. Alex Okot, the Dean- School of Distance and Lifelong Learning, and was attended by the Love Binti Team and academic staff from the Department of Adult and Community Education, and the family members of some of the graduates. Each participant was given an opportunity to showcase their products and talk about how they intended to use their new acquired skills to impact the girl child and empower women. The participants were so excited about their skills as they presented their products and one of them exclaimed, “with these skills, I will never die poor”.
The National Love Binti Project Manager, Ms. Susan Okae thanked the grandaunts for accepting to put value in small things that appeared to have no value and completed the course. She asked them to consider the saying that: “When the world sits, you should stand. When the world stands, you should meet the standards”. She congratulated the team upon completing their training and wished them the best of the day.
The Love BintiExecutive Director Ms. Elle Yang who was just returning from a UN Conference in the USA where she had presented Love Binti project informed the graduates that the project still had many more programmes that theycould be involved in to achieve the goal of keeping girls in school. She told the grandaunts to aim at quality in the products they make and that the project will pick some ofthem who will perform well to be deployed as seed teachers in their respective communities to train others. She asked them to realize that small things like giving a sanitary pad to a girl wouldprevent the girl child from dropping out of school and secure her a brighter future. She thus challenged the graduands not to despise the small things they do.She congratulated the team upon their success and urged them to always put the Love Binti Goal at the forefront.
After awarding the Certificates to the participants, Dr. Okot Alex Challenged the participants to make use of the skills they had acquired to impact their various communities where they come from. He observed that participants came from all regions of Uganda and that if each of them goes back and starts a training workshop in their areas, it would do a great job in helping girls across the country to stay in school.
One of the guests, Pastor Sentenza challenged the graduates to start thinking as philanthropists. He challenged the participants to stop thinking about aid and depending on donor funding to be able to do something. He told the graduates that if the Love Binti team moved all the way from Taiwan to cause impact in Uganda with such a wonderful project, we can also start from there to impact the rest of Africa.
Mr. Joseph Watuleke, the Coordinator for Love Binti Project informed the Dean that the second enrollment for the Love Binti Training had already been completed and the training was scheduled to start on Monday 06th August 2018. He encouraged those that wished to enroll to the training to start applying to the September 2018 intake.
