Hope Is A Verb - Education Rebuilding Communities: Girls, Healing and Hope in Northern Uganda

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

What happens when you redesign education around the people who have been left behind?Meet Alice Achan - social worker, educator and founder of the Te-Kworo Foundation, a boarding school in Northern Uganda that is helping young mothers and vulnerable girls rebuild their lives. What started as a small support group during the aftermath of war has grown into one of the most remarkable educational models in Africa. Today, Te-Kworo's three campuses support more than 1,000 young women through education, childcare, healthcare, counselling and community support. Alice shares how her own experiences as a child of war shaped what she calls a "School of Restoration" - a place where education, healthcare and healing work together to empower young women to create better futures for themselves, their families and change entire communities. In this episode:• Why Te-Kworo calls itself a "School of Restoration"• The link between education, healthcare and opportunity• The ongoing challenges of child marriage and cultural expectations• How boarding schools help keep vulnerable girls safe• The power of defeating shame and rebuilding confidence• Why educating girls can transform entire communities Timestamps:00:46 Why giving partners are a core part of Fix The News04:48 Interview with Alice Achen07:38 Education as a pathway out of poverty10:15 The tension between creating different futures while protecting cultural boundaries12:12 From education to healthcare - Te-Kworo's holistic model14:57 What happens when women have access to healthcare and education15:31 Gus & Amy - Midpoint reflections17:35 From trauma to triumph - Alice's personal story20:57 How Alice started a school under a tree26:52 The power of defeating shame28:38 Intergenerational ripples30:08 Alice's biggest lesson30:38 Bunk beds from Fix The News31:19 The big vision for Te-Kworo33:33 Alice's remedy for the world34:46 Gus & Amy - Final thoughtsBecome part of the Te-Kworo community:If Alice's story resonated with you, you can learn more about Te-Kworo and support their work below.👉 Website👉 Feed the School campaignAbout Fix The News:Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.Subscribe & follow:If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.Production credits:Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-RoseProduced by Fix The NewsAudio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That! This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.

Sometimes you don't want to sit down and makes ourselves hopeless. Situation can happen where we have to get up and make a positive move and action. To defeat shame. I would call it defeating of shame. Because when you sit down, you'll be shameful. But getting up and taking action will be a big defeat to a shame. Welcome to Fix the News. I'm Amy.

I'm Gus. And these are stories from the front lines of progress. Gus, I want to talk about our giving because I feel like it's something we haven't really spoken about a lot on this podcast. Yeah, and it's something that really matters, certainly to fix the news. It's right at the centre of the work that we do. For those of you who don't know, we donate 30% of all of our subscriber fees to small charities who make an outsize impact somewhere in the world. And it came about because when we actually launched paid subscriptions, which I think was about five years ago,

I remember thinking we can't just report good news. We have to be an organization that also makes good news happen. And that always seemed obvious to me. And it has been incredible to watch the giving arm of a media business kind of grow and evolve to the point now where I just count on a media. imagine, you know, reporting the news without having this available to us. I don't know if you remember this, but the first time I really became involved was in 2021 and I'd just written the humankind piece about Shabana Bashra Sheik.

And the girls' school, boarding school in Afghanistan, they had evacuated from Kabul when the Taliban came back. And you phoned me and you said, Amy, you have such a connection to their story, why don't you contact them and see how we can help? And those words, see how we can help, I feel like that sits at the heart of what our giving is. You didn't come in and say, let's write them a check. It was, let's see how we can help. And that is when I realized that we had a real opportunity to do something different. That's important because we're news organization. So the thing that we can do best is bring attention to something. But we can bring attention to something by reporting on a story. We can also bring attention to something by

offering to make a donation and then hopefully bringing our readers and our subscribers along with us. And this conversation that we're about to hear today with the Taquiro Foundation, I just think is such a great example of that. This was a huge turning point because they contacted us. They are once again a boarding school for girls, this time in Uganda, and they take young mothers and also vulnerable girls. And last year, their intake exceeded what they were expecting, and suddenly they had 200 more girls than what they could give beds to. They were all sleeping on the floor, so they asked us to help out.

I think it was 12,000 Australian. We bought 100 bunk beds. but the amazing thing is actually what happened after, which is we got an email from them saying, your subscribers almost doubled our donation. That was just this moment of thinking, okay, we can bring people along for this ride. We don't have to be the only ones who are putting really badly needed funds in the pockets of people who are doing incredible work.

And what I love about this conversation is that we, get a chance to go a little bit deeper with someone who has been in our network and who we've known about for more than a year. But I think that there are parts of that story that we didn't even know existed until you spoke to them. Gus, this is a really special conversation because Alice actually came to Sydney. And 101 podcast studios in Belmain were kind enough to give us their facilities and so we actually got to have this conversation face to face. My name is Alice Achan, the director of the Ketkao Foundation. I and I come from Uganda which is in East Africa.

I'm focusing on creating access to education for the vulnerable girls and young women in Northern Uganda and we are creating opportunity for them to have a second chance because The girls that we have in our school, most of them have been victims of sexual violence as a result of long-term conflict in northern Uganda. Many of them were forced into a pregnancy, which we are not ready for. So the school that we run provide opportunity for such girls, the pregnant girls, who miss that opportunity because of war and other.

circumstances to be back in school and settle and continue her learning. And our school is so unique in a way that we also created a pathway for daycare whereby these girls can be in a boarding setting and have their children in daycare section who also are provided with good nutrition. So it is quite a unique approach to education to many, many, many, many parts of the world. And I think in Africa, we may be the only. the school that is offering such kind of education. I mean, it's such a holistic model.

You've got the boarding, you've got the pregnancy care, you have a crache, you now have health care. You also call it a school for restoration. So what does healing look like if you are a student at your school? The school of restoration is based on our different approaches, to learning and education for young girls. First of all, we consider psychosocial support and social intervention in the lives of these girls right from the family level, and then putting them and setting them to the

classroom setting where education does not only look at learning in their class. We do integrated education. Our girls participate a lot in sports and games, and this has helped so many girls to find their potentials in different areas. So we look at skills like agriculture. Africa is basically farm and agricultural areas. So we involve our girls also in developing their skills, in food productions. And in that way, the girls are able to grow their own food.

So when they get out of our school, they are able to have various skills. It does restore a lot of opportunity that they were not able to get it or they missed it when they were out of school. It's now accepted that education is one of the surest pathways out of poverty. But what does that look like for you on the ground? What starts to happen to a community, to a region, to a country once you start educating these young women and girls? Yes, education has really been one of the key success to reduce poverty in the community. And to our girls and the community, they have witnessed the value of education in the lives.

For example, myself, to many people who know my family, they understand what kind of family I had. My father was very wealthy with cattle after all the girls were married. But when we came, we lost everything. But because I was able to go further with my education, I was focused on my education. I can now help my entire clan. And the family that understand, the family, that value education would prefer to send their daughter to school. But the pressure from the society, the pressure from the culture is still the biggest challenge. Biggest challenge.

Because they feel that once a girl is 15 and a breast begin to grow, it's time to get married. And that mindset is what we are fighting now. That no, when the girls begin to grow breast, doesn't mean that she's ready for marriage. She still have a long way to go. And that's why most of our schools are in boarding schools. So we keep the girl longer in school because when the girl comes in January, February,

she stays 70 or 80% of her time in school. That would make it safer for her. And she has a lot of influence from a school environment that, yes, being cool and safe, I can develop my skills, I can grow better. The greatest percentage there were mothers are not educated. I think almost in northern Uganda, only 0.5% of the women are educated.

Therefore, a woman who does not value education, who has not gone to school, will never value education for her daughter. And it is very difficult to fight, you know, as a mother for your girl to go to school because all the decisions are self-taken up by men. and even in the married process, when they're negotiating the bride price, the mother is not involved, the girl is not involved.

It's always the men and the clan leaders who are involved. These cultural traditions are really entrenched. They have really deep roots. How do you navigate so many things, like trying to educate these young girls and to create a completely different future at the same time respecting these cultural traditions and boundaries. We use a lot of the traditional structure.

Like the church, we have very strong support from the Catholic Church, from the Anglican Church, but also we have a strong movement of the Pentecostal churches. So we use this structure to preach the negative culture that affects women. And then number two, we also use radio talk show a lot. we go to radio and speak about this culture. But the most important tools that we are now using are the girls who came to our school, the pioneers who came to her school,

their career development and their lifestyles has been a very important message across the community because they see that they're working, they're handing money and their life is better. So now every community would want to admire that I want to send my... daughter to Quora High School so that she can be better. And also I think the motivation of scholarship. Why are girls married of two things? One, creation of wealth and the reduction of financial burden.

If you have girls and a man want to marry her, maybe let's say five cuttles and over $5,000, Australian, a family would offer the girl for that marriage because they know they'll fetch income. So now that we have the scholarship and the girls can pay less money whereby she can afford maybe through working the farm with the progress, that has motivated many, many, many parents who really wish their daughters to study come to school. You also haven't stopped at education. You have kept going and now your impact in these different places, you have two ambulances that actors, mobile. clinics, you have a hospital that's being built. All of these girls also have access to health care. Can you just give us a little bit of an idea about how health care is becoming part of Tukwara's model as well? So the health quiro has a long story. It was in 2008 when we had the girls return from the LRA. and she was six months pregnant.

So she caught malaria and she became anemic. Remember that was midly after the war and unfortunately she passed on. That day when this girl died, the whole school went on morning and their message was very key that how could we survive bullets

and we come and die in malaria? So most of the girls, when they finished, they went and did nothing and midwifery. And when they finished, they said, we want to help the community. Because remember, the war continued going. We want to help people, our people in the camp. So when they finished, in 2016,

after many years of the war, ascended like three, four years. They chose to go and work in the community and help other women's. There's high percentage of teenage pregnancy and early pregnancy. In our community, as a result of sexual.

violence. So when this girl started working in the community to help with maternal and child care programs, they were doing anti-natal care, and they were the one working in these maternity facilities. So the maternity facilities, now as I speak, it has grown so popular, and we were able to partner with one of the medical donors here who is helping us to be a 42 maternity hospital. But we still do a lot of mobile clinic on antinatal care, because that's when you will identify vulnerable mothers at risk. And that's how you identify women who would want to come out to school

and you listen to their stories. So the mobile clinic is part of our genesis to reach out to the women and girls in the community. You've created this whole ecosystem, The girls that have gone through the school are now helping in the healthcare clinics and the mobile clinics. It's incredible. We know that when you have education and health around women, you probably saw about 70% of a mother or a woman in the community.

Because health and education is the greatest unlocking opportunity for any woman. A healthy woman would give birth to a healthy baby. Educated woman would make our right decisions on our healthy life. And it's all integrated, right? Exactly. I would call that the most successful empowerment we have given to our girls. The thing that blows me away most about Tokwara Foundation and what they're doing is how holistic this model is. So not only are the girls living there.

not only are these young mothers being educated, they also have access to healthcare, and now those students who become nurses and midwives, and they're now out in the community, serving the community, finding other girls to bring into the school. So it's becoming this whole circular model. No one that makes me think of, Amy,

is how often the people we speak to, it's not just about the hard work that they've done and just the incredible huge hearts that they have, It's also that they often do things that are just really smart. That's often what sets these kinds of organizations apart, is that there's something innovative or there's something smart or a clever, ingenious thing that they've pulled off that allows their charitable efforts to go so much further,

that allows the impact to be so much bigger, that actually gets the solution across the line. It's something worth remembering. That you've got to be smart about it. You know, you need the smart as well as the heart. But what's interesting about that is this is unlimited resources. This doesn't come from people sitting down and working out a 10-point plan or a, you know, five-year strategy. This has just been smart when you are in the work and you are constantly looking for those opportunities

or you are constantly responding to challenges. Yeah, and that's a very different kind of ingenious to the ingenuity that we see a lot around us, where people think that if you draw the right diagram on the page, you can somehow do it. It's not how it works. You have to be in the work. You have to get your hands messy. But somehow, use that as an opportunity to do it better

and come up with really smart models like this one. The sky's the limit. What's really incredible is that all of this started from a place of trauma and conflict. You were around 13 years old when the LRA came to your village. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened, what life was like before, and what happened after? So as a young girl, typically grew up in African homes, whereby the parents would consider boys more to be educated, and they would look at a girl as a source of wealth and source of labor.

source of wealth means when a girl reached for 10, 15 years, she should be married off. And I witnessed a situation, especially with my mother, because she was the youngest wife of other five, four-co wives. So we would go with her to the farm, and she would sing all these sorrowful songs, and you would see tears rolling over her eyes. And as a child, you know, was so hurtful to see my mother cry. But I could not. not process what is this really that my mother was going through. As I grew up, I could see that, you know, she was facing all these challenges from the society, from her co-wives.

And I made a choice that, you know, I would try and make something different, make my life different and help make my life, the life of my mother different also. As I would go to school, I would admire female teachers. And I said, oh, if my mother was also a teacher, I would be good. But because she missed the opportunity, you know, she got married off, and I said, I have to work hard so that I become something different. However, at the age of 13, all the dreams were shattered off because we were faced by civil war. The rebels could come in our community and shut the entire community down. A lot of young girls were again abducted.

The schools were closed down. We could run day and night, hide ourselves in the bush. Many of my friends were abducted, many of them were killed. Those who had the opportunity to come back, they came back with their lives was totally changed. They were having children. Some of them were having bullet wounds. Some of them were pregnant, and that really became a big worrying to me. It's because my brothers were already educated ahead, had some jobs, took me to the city, and I was able to finish my studies.

I did social work and social administration at a diploma level, and I had to pretend to come back on work. Remember, the war was almost for 10 years, and as I finished my social work education, the war was still going on. There was also HIV AIDS. A lot of women got infected, and also by that time there was no HIV AIDS treatment. I lost very close relatives who left behind a six-month-old baby, and I took care of that baby as my first child. Unfortunately, she was already infected with HIV AIDS, and I took my time, my sacrifice, all my resources I have,

so that she can survive, she can live. But unfortunately, because there was no treatment. she eventually died and that became a very a very turning point to me I reached a point of hopelessness that I wanted to die and I went back to my village and by that time war was still going on and I just wanted to be with my community so if he die we die together but when I reached my community something changed I met a lot of my friends and women that I left in my community. Their life was so devastated. I decided I need to help these women. I need to work with them. We need to start something to encourage each other. So in my small village,

we started, you know, coming together as women, praying together, talking about the problem, encouraging each other, helping each other to power out, you know, what they have gone through. Now, the tequoro name means under tree. Quoro is a tree. Then Te is under. Because it was in the war. There were no home. There were no houses. So we started our support group under a tree. And this tree where we started the ministry and the project became a hospital where these girls were giving birth. These girls were getting treatment from there. These girls began to learn the first steps of education under that tree. I just had to put my trauma down. I would cry inside me, but I would also want to see that we walk the journey with the game. Because when they return with the babies and pregnancy, because the war was going on, they were rejected by their own community

because they were carrying children from the rebels. It really gave me an idea that maybe if I could do it, something small can change the lives of the girls. Definitely I did not have the power to stop the war, but I had the power to do something to change the girl's life. Once you got back to your village, before you started meeting under the tree, because you were a social worker by this point, was there one particular moment that made you realize that not only did you want to do something to help these women, but that you were also a person who could do something to help these women? There's one particular girl that was abducted. She came back and both her parents

were killed. She was on her own living on street. I picked that girl, I brought her into my one single room. That was when I was still working. I put her attached to a tailor who could train her on making a basic skills. So three months, the road, she was able to make pretty close for herself and for her child. And she gave birth in my house. I took care of her. And after three months, after going into Teller Ring, I saw a different skill in her. She was able to make her some money.

She was very confident. She was so positive. And she gave me another motivation that if this one who had more traumatized, she has been in the bush, She had this challenge, she can do. What about me? I just found myself, my conscience saying, no, get up and do it. Get up and do it. I mean, it speaks so much to the power of women

and the power of women to rise again and again. Where did you start? I mean, you are in your village. It is at the end of a war. You probably don't have a lot of research. sources, how did you go from under the tree and in that refuge center? How did you go from there to a school? So what happened was when we had a shelter in the middle of the camp, we were there on our own until maybe after one year when UNICEF and saved the children began to come.

they came and set big tents, you know, where the children were living because it was raining and all. There were many young women. So save the children built for us a temporary home where these ladies could sleep with their babies. Five years later, the rebels moved to Dara Congo and there was no active rebels movement in northern Uganda. So we turned the tents and the temporary. And the house into a classroom and still part as a dormitory. The girl had the desire that they want to go back to school. They want to go back to school. So we got the first funding from MacArthur Foundation in US that were able to build for us a school, three blocked of three rooms. So one was used as a classroom, one was used as a dormitory and the other one used as teachers' place and a small room for the

daycare, that's where we started from the tents to the tree, to a classroom. To a classroom. And now to three different sites? Yes. So currently we have three campuses with the original campus, which is in Padere, with over 800 girls, and Nooya, which is the second campus with over 200 girls, and Kitgum with about maybe 50. So we have over 1,000 girls. Is there one story of one girl, and I know you must have so many, but is there one story that really stands out for you? There's a story of a girl who was married to a banker.

And when she realized this girl can no longer suit her standard as his standard has grown, she divorced this girl, abandoned her with two children, but her parents, her father, brought her back to her school. She finished grade 10. She went to grade 12 and as I speak, she's going to university and she wants to do business administration and she's competing that she wants to be a banker like a husband so that she can compensate and make a fully action revenge, which is a very good competition. It's a positive competition to me because I, you know, know, back to my story, sometimes you don't want to sit down and makes ourselves hopeless. Situation can happen where we have to get up and make a positive move and action.

To defeat shame. I would call it defeating of shame. Because when you sit down, you'll be shameful. But getting up and taking action will be a big defeat to a shame. Yeah. And the defeating of shame, you can change so much if you can defeat shame. can empower other people. Yeah. Because when you're in shame, you'll not be able to do anything. Yeah. And you will become a carpet that everybody steps on.

Yeah. But when you pick up, you roll up the carpet and you walk with your head up. And there are so many ripples from this work. These girls that are in school now are changing the future for their children as well. It's just incredible. How has doing this work helped your healing? It's hard to describe, but I feel really satisfied. I'm 53, and now I'm feeling just dissatisfaction

because seeing that I've been working for the last 23 years, and we have achieved the greatest milestone in ensuring equality in terms of education for the women. First of all, the provision. the accessibility, it is there. And we can retain a girl in school. So whether your education was disrupted because of pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, unwanted pregnancy,

there is a window of going back to school to study with your baby and we provide maternity care. To me, I feel that is the biggest achievement for every woman across our nation because they can learn from there and they can access education. Seeing the positive change in the lives of a student who come to a school from day one to the end of the term, it's been a big motivation, has been a big comfort and healing to me.

What would you say is the biggest lesson that you've learned? The biggest lesson is partnership and collaboration. And this has been a long way through financial and resource partnership, action through experts and people with different skills. I mean, we talk about partnership. It did not come from one foundation, but are groups of people who believe in our stories and in our vision. We have great partnership with Australian. Your listeners, when we had the problem with accommodation and bed, for the girls. You mobilize resources and you raise money so that we're able to buy bank beds for this girl. That is the power of partnership and collaboration. We would not be able to do it alone without your listeners, without you to come and say, hey, these people need the bed.

So one of my biggest lesson in this work and one of the most important thing in the work that we do is good partnership, good collaboration to mobilize skills, resources. and experts. If you were given all the resources, all the building materials, that you could keep growing this school, you could keep growing this dream and this vision, what would the future look like for you? I would want to have a special, probably, university

that will take a girls into ITEC, into state, science because we are in science well, you and the eye technique. So we would want to see that, yes, we have this university that would, even if a small institution, to focus on high level education for the girls, so that they go to university, either through collaboration or having our own university within the north. Because in our school, we have raised from grade 10 to grade 12 so that all the girls from our school will be able to go to university and attain their career development and full potential. I would still be focused on, you know, ensuring that girls go and do courses like medical doctors, nurses and midwives, they're still

very needed in northern Uganda. Of course, you know, issues around maternal and child health, it still falls back on women. It's still a burden on women. So if you have nurses who are trained, girls who are trained medical doctor, they will be of a greater because they'll be in their own community and they'll work in their community. So that will help resolve a lot of issues around women. I love that these girls would then go out and create more scaffolding in the places where they've come from and that scaffolding is a lot of care for other women. How can people support you? We are looking at transition from grade 12 to university because you have our girls who are very successful, we have academically and very skillfully gifted, and would see that they

proceed with their education in colleges and university. So our interest would be looking at scholarship, transition to university from our school. Okay, well, we will put links in our podcast notes so people can find out more about that. And my final question today is, if If you could prescribe one remedy or one medicine for people in the world right now, what would it be? Access to education is still a big challenge, especially in the vulnerable community. I think across the world education is still a big problem for many, and particularly women who have a lot of interruptions in their lives.

Even I think in some of developing world, they still have challenges. So what will I do with my child? Day care is very expensive. When a mother is working, a mother need to go to school. Is that mother able to go to school and stay comfortable without paying for day care? The care is still very expensive even across the global.

So education, access to education for the underdeserved women. it is the key to make the world balance. Gus, I know the word partnership gets thrown around a lot, but there was something that shifted in speaking with Alice. We've been in the same room with her, and I am just so committed to staying on this journey in whatever way we can with this school. Well, I suppose it's the evolution of a partnership into a relationship and to be in relationship with these kinds of people, to be in relationship with these organizations and through them connected to so many other organizations, it makes me really excited about what else is possible without giving efforts.

And as we slowly start to build up this ecosystem of relationships and a kind of a web of giving that surrounds us as fixed and use. and it makes me so excited about what is still to come and what we are still likely to see from people like Alison at the Tokora Foundation. I do feel like we're only just getting started. And it also allows us as a media organisation to catch those stories that wouldn't necessarily be big enough

to be written up in our newsletter as one of the big threads of progress. But increasingly, I think we're going to start to see them showing up. The work that Toquora Foundation is doing, the videos that we have received from them, the faces of the girls, the sheer kind of enjoyment

and zest for life you can see coming through on the screen is something that I come back to again and again. We know there are a lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. It's made possible by our paying subscribers. So if you're one of them, a big thank you. And if you want to support what we do, you can find us at fixthenews.com.

This show was produced by Amy Rose with audio by Anthony Badalato from Here About. It was made in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundry and Waiwerong peoples. If you liked it, hit subscribe, leave a review or send it to someone you love who needs to hear it.

Thanks for listening. Thank you.