In the dusty alleys of Benganzi Ghetto located in Mukono Central division Mukono Municipality Mukono district , where the smell of cheap alcohol mixes with the smoke of cooking fires and the distant sound of traffic, something unexpected is happening. Every afternoon, a group of children who sleep on the streets gather beneath a tree. They sit on the bare ground or on makeshift benches, , eyes fixed on a volunteer teacher. For one precious hour, the noise of the ghetto fades, and the children learn to form letters, sound out words, and write their own names.
This is no ordinary classroom. It is a space shared with a bar, offered by a kind-hearted local woman and protected by the ghetto’s own leader. In a place many people fear to enter, literacy has found an unlikely home.
Every day, the number of children living on the streets of Mukono continues to rise. Most do not choose this life. Poverty, family breakdown, the death of parents, hunger, and abuse drive them from their homes. Once on the streets, school becomes a distant memory. Fees go unpaid. Books and pens are luxuries they cannot afford. Many can neither read nor write. Some do not even know how to spell their own names.
Into this harsh reality stepped two organizations: Mvulana Foundation Uganda and Literacy Aid Uganda. Their volunteers refuse to accept that these children are beyond help. They come to the ghettos not with lectures, but with patience, chalk, and the quiet conviction that every child deserves a second chance.
Finding a place to teach them, however, has never been simple. Residents of the informal settlements are often wary of the street children. Hotels and formal spaces charge rents that free education programmes cannot meet. The children themselves move constantly sleeping under shop verandas at night, wandering the settlements by day. A stable classroom seemed almost impossible.
Then Patrick Ssegawa, leader of the Benganzi Ghetto, made a decision that changed everything. He opened the space to the children. A local woman offered tan area that also serves drinkers. For one hour each day, the bottles and the noise make way for lessons.
Eric Yiga, Executive Director of Mvulana Foundation Uganda, does not romanticise the arrangement. “The teaching is often interrupted,” he says. “Sometimes the owner needs the space. Sometimes drunk people arrive. Interestingly, some of the people buying alcohol are also among the learners. That makes the work even more challenging.”
Yet the children keep coming. They come because they still want to learn. They come because, for that single hour, someone believes they can change their lives.
“We want to see the lives of these children change and prevent them from falling into traps when they face problems,” Yiga explains. “Many of them get into trouble simply because they do not know how to read and write.”
Diphas Kiguli, Vice Chairperson of Literacy Aid Uganda, describes the daily rhythm. The children gather in the bar . The lesson begins. When it ends, some drift away to look for food. Others linger, reluctant to leave the only structured hour of their day. Their reading and writing skills remain low, but the desire is there raw, stubborn, and real.
The dream shared by both organisations is larger than one hour under a bar . They want these children to become useful members of society, young people who can read a job notice, fill in a form, understand a contract, or simply write a letter home. For now, the classroom is improvised, the lessons brief, and the surroundings chaotic. But in the shadow of a bar in Benganzi Ghetto, something rare is taking root: hope that can spell its own name.
And for children who have known only the street, that is where every new story begins.
