Building Tomorrow strengthens children’s reading and math skills in elementary and middle school through the Roots to Rise program – a method based on children’s actual level of knowledge and quickly producing results.

Building Tomorrow was founded by Joseph Kaliisa from Uganda and George Srour from the US. They initially focused on constructing schools across the country, but upon recognising the deficiencies in municipal schools, they decided to enhance the capacity of the existing education system.

Building Tomorrow employs an evidence-based approach to help children unlock the reading code and learn the four arithmetic operations in 40 hours. They have successfully implemented this method in many municipal schools across Uganda through a clever approach, where the central element is the so-called Building Tomorrow “fellows”. These are recent university graduates who are recruited in a highly competitive process and receive thorough training. They are stationed in a rural village for two years, where their role is to establish a local system of volunteers and train both them and teachers in the Root to Rise method.

After the seven-day training, two teachers instruct 40 students (grades 2-5) at a time, divided by knowledge level, for one hour each day over 40 days.

The volunteers carry out similar work in villages for younger children and those who have dropped out of school. They also collaborate with schools and parents to encourage children who are not attending school to return.