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Sister Baitwababo committed to bringing glory to her former school
Sr. Secondina Baitwababo wants others girls to benefit from the school that opened doors for her, of which she is now the headteacher. PHOTOS | FAHAD MALIK JJINGO.
What you need to know:
- Growing up in a culture that did not value educating girls, Sister Secondina Baitwababo beat the odds and now holds a masters degree. Now given the responsibility of heading the school that opened doors for her, Sr. Baitwababo wants to help as many girls as she can to attain education and become self-reliant, writes Fahad Malik Jjingo.
Sr. Secondina Baitwababo, an enthusiast of girls’ education is living her lifelong dream of giving back to the community that nurtured her into the responsible, full functioning adult she is today.
Baitwababo, born on June 24, 1967, is the second born of eight children from western Uganda, Bushenyi District. From a very young age, Baitwababo realised that she would be very lucky to obtain any level of formal education. Education in their home was reserved for the boys while girls were groomed for marriage. Her own mother had been pulled out of school in Grade Three and married off at 16 years old.
However, that seed planted in her mother took root and she convinced her husband to give their daughters an opportunity to stay in school a little bit longer. Her mother’s efforts paid off and after primary school, she joined Kalungu Girls’ Training Centre in 1985.
“The risk my mother took to take me to that school has stuck in my memory and was a testimony to how much she wanted her girls to study. Remember, at this time the country was going through a civil war, there were roadblocks everywhere, but my mother ignored all that and travelled with me all the way from Bushenyi to Masaka. No sacrifice was too big for her,” she shares.
St Charles Lwanga Kalungu Girls’ Training Centre, started in 1967 by the missionaries of Africa, better known as the white fathers, became her home for the next four years.
“I met the Sacred Heart Sisters and I was fascinated by the way they lived and loved each other despite their difference in nationalities and cultures. They treated us students as mature women, taught us how to make good decisions, the value of a woman in society and how to stand on our own,” Sr. Baitwababo says.
Education and career
After her O-Level, she joined St. Aloysius Bwanda in 1988-1989, for her A-Level before joining Nkozi Teachers’ college for tertiary education. At Nkozi, she trained as a grade V teacher from 1990 to1991. She then enrolled for a Business Management degree in 2002 at Nkozi University specialising in accounts.
“In 2004-2011, I was given the opportunity to work as school bursar which I welcomed with both hands. I was more than glad to come back home and serve a community which had been so dear to me,” she says. She later went to Kenya and taught accounts, at Eldoret Secondary School, for about eight years before going to the US where she pursued a master’s degree in guidance and counselling.
“After completing my masters, I went to Rome, for international exposure and in 2014 I came back and was appointed a congregational treasurer between 2014 and 2019. In 2019 I returned to GTC Kalungu as the head of the school,” she says.
Sr. Baitwababo has since taken up the mantle of expanding the local community’s awareness of the importance of girl child education.
“I am committed to seeing the girl-child gain practical skills, develop a sense of creativity towards self-support and reliance and this is what the entire team here at GTC works tirelessly to achieve. We want to reduce the number of girls marrying too young and those becoming pregnant out of desperation,” she says.
Assuming responsibility
Sr. Baitwababo has since taken up the In addition to the local curriculum, the catholic-founded, girls’ boarding school with O and A-Level teaches a scope of practical skills such as sewing, home economics and dance and drama, among other practical lessons. “I have realised that parents want good academic results, discipline and religious commitment from their children and that is what we aim to deliver,” she says.
Achievements
One of Sr. Baitwababo’s biggest achievements so far is reducing expenses on food. The pragmatic sister turned the school’s 62 acres of land into a farm where the students are trained to cultivate crops such as maize, beans, matooke and rear poultry for their own consumption.
“St Charles Lwanga GTC has been true to its motto “Dare to Be True”, my predecessors upheld this during my time as a student here and my team and I now are also putting emphasis on this. We have created an atmosphere that is conducive to moulding an all-round student, and helped by the school programme, the students have managed to get discipline and academic success,” she notes.
Her major goal is strengthening the sponsorship scheme, since a big number of the students come from rural areas of Masaka and Kalungu where parents have little or no income to sustain their children in a boarding school.
“A big number of our students need financial aid especially the orphans and those from poverty-stricken homes. That is why we are always on the lookout for any organisation willing to lend a hand to help give these young girls a chance to make their lives better by attaining an education,” she says.
The pandemic effect
Sr. Baitwababo says the education sector and her school in particular has been greatly affected by Covid-19 because the school relied on physical meeting of teachers and students. She is now looking at building up a strong computer laboratory to expose the students to the growing technology and advanced e-learning in the school to address the challenge of prolonged interruptions of studies due to the pandemic.
“We have so far managed to get one partner on board that is Microsoft who is going to offer us internet, security cameras and 50 monitors and with a furnished computer laboratory. With this equipment, we can equip our students with skills that can help them use internet enabled gadgets and embrace e-learning,” she notes.
I have laid out strategies also to increase enrollment of students and I am working on several proposals to secure more funding that will help us take on some students.
“In 1985 when I was a student here, we were 210 girls but the past leadership tried its best and managed to increase the numbers. By the time schools closed, we were 355. My goal is to get more than 500 so that we get some more funds that will help us to improve the welfare of the teachers,” she says.
Financial pressure
According to Sr Baitwababo, the school’s biggest challenge is lack of funds.
“The school is private and entirely depends on funds generated by students through school fees collections. It makes maintenance of schools in the form of paying utilities, and teachers’ salaries very hard. Can you imagine that staff has not been paid since last year? We have huge outstanding bills for power, water, security and other bills of maintaining unused infrastructure which is also too costly but what is more challenging is that several parents have lost their jobs during the lockdown and bringing back children to school will be hard. This will affect our source of income but as well as shatter our dream of reducing early pregnancies and school dropouts,” she notes sadly.
What they say
Olive Ngabirano, the school librarian, says she is happy to be working under the stewardship of Sr. Baitwababo since she understands and listens to every worker’s concerns. Ngabirano is optimistic that Sr. Baitwababo is going to help the school prosper because of her hard work and commitment to improving the students’ performance.
Sr. Baitwababo shows some of the computers that survived after losing more than 20 computers because of being covered for long during the lockdown.
“She listens to all students individually and offers them counselling, guidance when they are returning to school after the long holidays. Because of the lockdown these days she keeps reaching out to them through calling their parents regularly. That is how committed she is,” Ngabirano says.
Ema Kalule, a teacher at Kalungu GTC, says that the headteacher has improved the practical skills in the school and by the time students leave the school they will be able to employ themselves using small capital since they learn baking skills, sewing and agriculture, among others.
Kalule notes that she has improved staff performance by helping the workers to take pride in the quality of their work, and has helped staff access loans from the school staff project at a subsidised interest rate.
“I have no doubt that the school population and performance are going to improve because of her good leadership skills, self-motivation and love for the school. She involves parents, students and teachers in all these plans which has improved morale and motivation of various stakeholders, and this will help improve performance and productivity of the school,” he adds.
Free data
Muganga shares that at Victoria University, learning and assessment have been online and even their students managed to do their exams. He explains that their V-Class Learning Management System has an examination integrity software that helps them assess and supervise students from wherever they are.
“We struck a partnership with Airtel Uganda to get data we provide to all our students for free. This is an offer to all students and lecturers at Victoria University for the next eight months. This was the only way we had to chip in to ensure continuity of learning by supporting parents and those students who pay for themselves. All they have to do is to get the device and we provide the data,” he says.
According to Muganga, these unprecedented times call for universities to give back on what they have made over time to students so that they build human capital and avoid dropouts.
Mpezamihigo shares that in June KIU developed enough capacity to deliver online learning and now has the digital platforms and access systems. He says lectures are going on online and students are virtually defending their dissertations and theses virtually.
“Our experience with online learning has been a good one much as there are challenges of connectivity and delayed access but these are not hampering the delivery. Management has also not had physical meetings as we have a virtual senate,” he reveals.
Bursaries and fees cuts
In the wake of the pandemic, Victoria University announced full scholarships for five disadvantaged Ugandans who joined this year’s academic intake thbegan on March 1.
Among the beneficiaries of the scholarships was David Siya, a traffic police officer attached to the Central Police Station, Sylvester Lulenzi a second-hand clothes vendor from Jinja, Moses Ssemitego from Kalungu all won fully paid scholarships. The other two slots were reserved for girls and went to Feddy Akello and Swabrah Mbawomye.
In February 2021, the institution also slashed tuition fees to help ease financial pressure on students and their families sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. The 50 per cent reduction was made to cater for the new entrants.
Muganga says all these initiatives will be kept in place for the next three years because they do not know when the pandemic will end.
“We shall even give more bursaries where possible for students to come to school in a bid to limit dropouts. I encourage other institutions to move beyond the profits and look at the future,” he urges.
