About Us
How It All Began
Mukono Primary School
In 2017, a couple POE board members stopped at Mukono Primary School as they were driving by after a day of gorilla trekking in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. They were so taken with their experience and the joy of the children, that they started funding a lunch program at the school on their own (not through POE). Five years later in 2022, another board member visited the school and was so blown away by the impact the lunch program was having on the whole community, that the entire board decided to formally create a Uganda Schools Project to provide additional support through POE.
Mukono School was closed for 22 months during Covid, and when it reopened in January 2022, with the lunch program going strong their student population grew from 571 to 828. In April of 2022 POE awarded our first grant to build an onsite kitchen and serve the students lunch. In June of 2022 POE awarded a new grant to Mukono Primary School that included not only lunch, but breakfast, scholastic materials for all the children, as well as funds to hire new teachers, fund teacher training and a study tour. In addition, POE gives merit scholarships to any student who scores above a predetermined level on the government test administered at the end of the term.
In December of 2022 POE promised to support any students in high school (approximately $1,100 per year) who scored in the top division on the end of the year Primary Leaving Exam (PLE). Typically, Mukono had 0 or 1 students score in this top division for the past 10 years, with a high of 3 in 2020 after the lunch program was instituted in 2018 and before Covid hit. In January 2023 the PLE results placed Mukono as the second best public school in their district with 7 students scoring in the highest division! By January of 2026 we had 38 students in our high school sponsorship program and the number that qualify each year is increasing.
When the girls’ netball teams qualified for nationals, but couldn’t afford to attend, we sponsored that as well. In February 2024 members of the POE board travelled to Bwindi to monitor our grants, reconnect with the Head Teacher/administrators and visit the community. We were so impressed to see that every penny had been used as described and the joy and love from the community was overwhelming. The students from Mukono School come from humble backgrounds, but they are making great strides and so appreciative of all that POE is doing to change their lives.
Because so many more students are enrolling and actually showing up at school on a daily basis, there was a need for more classrooms and a Multi-Purpose room at Mukono School. In 2024-2025 we built a 2 story building with 5 classrooms, offices, an MP room and flush toilets which opened in the fall of 2025! We are now paying for a total of 15 teachers to help staff these new classrooms. In April 2026 we delivered a prototype of the Digital Classroom (DC) and in September we got on a plane and brought enough tablets for an entire class.
The improvements in the school have been big and fast, but there is still more to do! See our Uganda Schools page for our future plans.
If you would like to visit Mukono School, check out this video…
https://youtu.be/dOeONv3QHlo
If you are thinking of donating, check out this video…
https://youtu.be/DbULkDJTmd4
Link to our donation page…
https://poescholarships.org/get-involved/donate/