THE LEGACY SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
Pioneered by ICU’s Country Director, Jolly Grace O. Andruvile, the Legacy Scholarship Program (LSP) provides scholarships and mentoring to 590 secondary and 195 university students from Gulu, Amuru, and Pader districts. Some of the greatest needs and largest gaps in development in northern Uganda can be attributed to the region’s limited access to secondary education and post-secondary education. To address this problem, we created the LSP, an initiative that develops the leadership and life-skill capacities of promising students. Launched in 2005, the program focuses on increasing access to post-primary education and providing mentoring from local leaders. From just 100 secondary students at its inception, the program has expanded to include nearly two hundred university students. The LSP is a program managed and operated entirely by Ugandan community leaders.
WHO THE PROGRAM HELPS
Acceptance into the program is based on a combination of academic performance and level of vulnerability, with special consideration given to children who are total orphans, heads of household, formerly abducted returnees, those living positively with HIV/AIDS, or child mothers. Vulnerability is something that is considered for program inclusion because vulnerable youth are at a higher risk of experiencing academic failure, and are often unable to afford school fees. When students are coping with the birth of their own children or the death of their parents, they need mentoring assistance in order to keep academics a top priority. Although many students in the region are affected with post-conflict trauma and would benefit from scholarships and mentoring, LSP chooses to work with the students who most need individualized support.
After vulnerable and talented youth are identified throughout northern Uganda, they undergo a selection process that evaluates both their vulnerability and past academic performance. These children are then evaluated through a series of assessments at home and school before they are officially accepted into the program.
Once accepted into the LSP, each student receives two things:
1. A full paid, merit-based scholarship
2. Mentoring from one of ICU’s full-time mentors
Download Application Details
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SECONDARY STUDENT STATS
· 45% of students are girls; 55% are boys
· 91% of students are orphans—44.9% are partial orphans, 46.1% are total orphans
· 26.1% of students are orphans because of HIV/AIDS
· 23.9% of students are orphans due to war
· 5.5% of students are members of child-headed families
· 4.3% of students are child mothers
· 13.7% of students have been abducted by the LRA at least once
HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS
An LSP mentor is an employed community leader whose purpose is to build a personal relationship with his/her student and provide professional follow up for each child. Through this interaction, LSP mentors ensure academic accountability, encourage scholastic success, foster leadership skills, and provide parental and career-oriented guidance for each student in the program.
Legacy Scholarship Program mentors receive extensive training prior to working with students. Invisible Children Uganda provides mentors with professional development training in areas of psychosocial support, child protection, trauma counseling, and guidance counseling. We currently employ 24 mentors, and, on average, each mentor works with roughly 30 students. Monthly visits are made to every student’s home and school to ensure that the student receives the full support needed to seed their personal and academic success. When problems arise at home or school, mentors respond immediately and help students cope. When students achieve accomplishments—big or small—mentors are there to take notice, congratulate students, and offer up words of encouragement.
Mentors help not only students, but parents and teachers as well. In addition to giving one-on-one advice to students, mentors provide parents and teachers with information and ways to serve as positive role models for their children and students. Without vital current information about a student’s status at school, a parent cannot effectively support a student at home; without inside information about what a student is struggling with at home, a teacher cannot cater to a student’s needs. Mentors bind the parent-teacher-student relationship and ensure its strength by utilizing open communication and regular school and home visits.
ONGOING DEVELOPMENTS
In 2007, IC Uganda launched a pilot program to provide university scholarships to students who had successfully completed secondary school as LSP students. Similar to the application process for secondary school, students who wished to receive scholarships for university needed to meet similar criteria for academic performance and vulnerability. Originally, only four full scholarships were given to recent graduates of the LSP. In 2008, the number of scholarships provided to national universities jumped to fifty-five, forty of which were offered to girls. In 2009, the LSP extended its reach by offering one hundred scholarships to not only girls in the program, but also any female graduating from secondary institutions in the eleven districts across northern Uganda.
Currently, 195 students are receiving scholarships to pursue either a diploma or a bachelor's degree, at prestigious universities such as Gulu University, Makerere University, Kyambogo University and other tertiary institutions. To ensure the success of these students at the university level, a mentor who specializes in psychosocial support helps university students through any personal or academic issues that may arise.
The LSP also developed an extracurricular component to mentoring that involves hands-on, student-to-student involvement. The club helps students form volleyball teams with other LSP students. These clubs meet after classes finish and allow mentors to interact with their students in a non-academic setting. In addition to these sports clubs, LSP mentors organize writing and debate competitions, run weekend seminars that prepare students for exit exams, and help counsel students through their transition from secondary school to university.
To give a scholarship, click here.
