BESO Foundation

The prize fund will enable us to achieve two objectives;

1. Becoming self-sufficient in financing own operational costs for running our core business.
2. Ensuring sustainability of our model schools and economic empowerment programs.

For the past 10 years, we successfully established an Early Childhood Learning Center, Primary, and a Secondary and Vocational Schools that provide access to quality education for 1,000 children. Each school offers scholarships to out standing students from low income households.

The schools are 70% nearly complete and once completed, they will serve as model schools and be resource centers for other schools enabling 3,000 children accessing affordable quality education. 

The Prize fund will enable us set up boarding houses that will generate local revenue and reduce external financing  by 70% until we are fully internally financed by 2023. It will help us to run a very cost-effective model that combines tuition collection with a scholarship approach. 50% of all enrolled learners pay a subsidized tuition fee, while the remaining 50% are on a full scholarship. We also hope to invest 50,000 USD into our community economic empowerment program, by supporting community microcredit for households to save, borrow and increase their ability to pay tuition for their children.

I founded BESO in 2010 after observing how poverty had imposed tough choices to the rural poor families including my own, on how many children to send to school and how long they may stay in school.  Over 20 years ago my parents sold their cows and crops to enable me go to Kampala capital for a better education out of 6 siblings for better education. After my graduation and with a few years of teaching experience, I decided to focus on making a difference in rural communities through providing access to a good education. I talked to schools in Kampala who equally shared my passion and they graciously offered a 50% scholarship to 300 children coming from different villages.

In 2010, I got the first microgrant to Uganda of $1600 from Spark Microgrants  and went to my childhood village called Wanteete and asked the 80 mothers what they would do with the money. One mother said, "We want our children to be like you Aaron because you are educated". They all agreed to start the school, the school opened in 2011 with 100 students and two teachers on a quarter acre piece of land and now 1,000 students.

In Uganda only 21% of students complete a full cycle of primary school. Children walk 5-10km to the near by school where over 100+ children  cram into one classroom studying on empty stomachs, 1 teacher for over 77 children. School enrollment is rising, but literacy remains below 50% among youth in Uganda. Often the poor children cannot afford the costs of quality education, a human right and an  opportunity  to break their own cycle of poverty. Uganda is the 3rd youngest nation with about 75% of its population below the age of 30 years.

In rural Uganda 80% of girls do not attend high school due to forced or early marriages, never enrolling in school or late enrolling too late and influence of relatives and demands on the first daughter.

Our aim is to break the cycle of poverty in rural Uganda through access to quality education for children mostly girls through our model schools that accelerate quality teaching for improved learning outcomes and economic empowerment for women through micro-finance to improve livelihoods.

We are leveraging a social enterprise approach to solving access to quality education and economic empowerment for women. We are aiming to build sustainable access to quality education

The COVID 19 pandemic has unearthed the need to shift our operational rhythm towards a
social enterprise model, whilst lessening dependency on grants and external support.

While our external funding enables us to deliver the programs, we hope to achieve the sustainability of our programs by reducing the need for external support over the next five years. It is of fundamental importance to gain full local resource mobilization and fully finance our operations to reduce the vulnerability and dependency on foreign support.

Once our model schools and livelihood programs are completed and sustainable by 2024, we are shifting to scale our services  through an education micro-finance social enterprise that provides financing and capacity building to low-cost private schools to accelerate their growth and performance at speed and scale enabling millions of children access quality education in Africa.

In 2010 a child called Mark Mubiru of 6 years was knocked to death by a local taxi motorcycle while taking a long walk of 5 miles to the nearest school as described above. Driven by this injustice, I joined with 80 mothers to start a school for Mark and other children like him with a microgrant of $1600

We  embarked upon a process of establishing sustainable model schools in rural districts in Uganda. In Kayunga District, we have established an Early Childhood Learning Center, Primary School, and a Secondary and Vocational School. Once completed, these three schools will serve as sustainable model schools and be resource centers for other schools in the district. Each school to offer scholarships to out standing students from low income households.

We create an educational environment that enables a girl child have the same opportunity like a boy child and to help her unlock her potential to succeed and their cycle of poverty

We enhance the teaching capacity and delivery of the teachers for children to have access to right content, assessment, active learning and safe environment which leads to quality education.

We economically empower community of women and families that enjoys improved livelihoods.