The Lights for Literacy project is a collaborative intervention implemented by Let There Be Light International, KACCAD – through its subsidiary Solar Health Uganda – and Uganda Spelling Bee (popularly known as Enjuba). The objectives of this project are to:
- Enable children to access reliable clean light during nighttime when they are doing their academic work at home
- Increase literacy among communities (especially young children) in remote rural settings where people have limited or no access to literacy resources
Under this project, Uganda Spelling Bee provides literacy materials while KACCAD provides solar lights as sponsored by a sponsoring entity. Since the beginning of the project, it is Let There Be Light International (LTBLI) has been providing lights and sponsoring the distribution costs.
Under the implementation procedures, each recipient is given a set of literacy materials, and recipients from the same household are given only one solar light as this is the policy by the current sponsoring entity (LTBLI). As is the policy and procedure in other projects under the LTBLI’s solar program, the recipients are subjected to an intake survey in which baseline data is collected for program use including follow-ups in the future when assessing impact.
The data collected includes recipient demographics, the household's current source of lighting, the duration of light use at night in the home when doing academic work, the current weekly household income, the current weekly household expenditure on lighting, and occurrences of incidents of fire burn among household members among other things. In the case of children, consent is sought from their respective parents and the parents are involved in the surveys in order for them to provide certain information regarding parameters upon which the children lack knowledge.
The project has so far been implemented in Wakiso, Mukono, and Amolatar districts in Uganda, and is done in collaboration with local community-based organizations in the respective distribution areas, and schools where the children study from. The local community-based organizations do the recipient mobilization and these ones are subjected to a comprehensive vetting by Solar Health Uganda in order to identify the eligible recipients before the actual distribution of lights and books begins.
