KOOGERE FOUNDATION UGANDA

The focus of this component of the program is on community teaching, learning, knowledge acquisition, and appreciating our cultural legacy in development processes. The goal is to increase the sense of identity and social connection within our community while maximizing development benefits for heritage conservation efforts. Youth who are in or out of school, women’s organizations, people who work for the government, nongovernmental organizations, and other businesses are the target audiences. This is accomplished through conventional educational channels, including:

1. Establishing and promoting heritage clubs in education system: This strategy targets school going youth by establishing heritage clubs in primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions in the Tooro Kingdom. The intent is to bring together students from different cultural backgrounds to share varied experiences in their cultures and traditions, dig out the values that promotes social connectivity, livelihood and well-being to stimulate sustainable heritage conservation. It is done through putting up effective club leaders, music, dance, drama, storytelling, debates, community outreaches and integration of environment conservation. They are supported with educational materials that provide information about heritage in general and guide them in carrying out activities that conserve and promote their schools and other community’s heritage.
2. Koogere community museum: It houses a collection of traditional artifacts, oral histories, and myths from the people of Tooro for education purposes and amusement of local and foreign tourists. It encourages education regarding the worth of traditional knowledge and cultural relics of the Tooro Kingdom’s inhabitants. It motivates people in the community to reflect on the long-forgotten brilliance of their ancestors’ knowledge, encourages creativity to modernize the production of old information and services, and serves as a hub for both domestic and foreign travelers’ cultural amusement.

• Akaswa Ka Tooro: Akaswa Ka Tooro is a phrase in the native tongue of Batooro people in western Uganda. Akaswa translates as “an Anthill” while Tooro is a geographical area and Batooro are the native and most dominant people. An anthill is a mound of earth that ants build to use as a place for breeding and raising young ones. Ants are highly prized by the Batooro People because of their joint efforts to rear their young. When they are dry, they are prepared in a variety of ways to create several kinds of souse that can be served with any dish. Along those lines, the community responsibility of raising children was more highly recognized in Batooro than it is now. In an extended family and community, everyone who was an adult was responsible for raising up any child, which is no longer the case with the rise of nuclear families. 

In nucleus families, children spend most of their time in school, and both parents are occupied by work, leaving very little time for children compared to traditional setups. Children miss out on much of the parental guidance and other necessary traditional life skills that can shape them into promising adults. For example, most children today miss learning practical life skills from grandparents or other adults, such as the preparation of traditional and other meals, effective hygiene and reproductive health practices, creativity to become enterprising in the future, valuing traditional dressing codes, necessary morals in public places, etc. Akaswa ka Tooro, therefore, is a traditional platform in Tooro Kingdom that brings together children and youth to be provided with life skills to enable them to stay well connected in communities, stay healthy, and be enterprising.

Ekyoto Mukairirizi: This is a program that gathers people around a borne fire in the evening to talk about ways to address pressing issues that have an impact on their socioeconomic lifestyles at home or in the community, such as marital violence, the widespread use of drugs and alcohol by young people, etc. In Tooro sub region, borne fire in the evenings was traditionally used by majority households as a place to rest from daily chores, it was a source of warmness during cold times, above it all it’s a place where pertinent issues among family members would be discussed to forge a way forward. It was lively in nature that it would involve roasting of maize, meat, as well as taking traditional wines and other drinks. Today, Ekyoto is adopted by Koogere Foundation Uganda to gather community members to discuss and solve development issues at family or community levels. It is interesting that different public and private organizations are adopting it to engage community members in planning processes or addressing other pertinent issues.  

Hakasaka: This is a platform for married couples to interact traditionally, share experiences, and develop cultural knowledge and skills to improve their marriages, prevent family dissolution, promote human rights, and increase household finances