On 22 December 2023, a room in Nakivale Refugee Settlement filled with people holding certificates. Banners from YAREN's World Water Day dialogue still hung on the walls. Standing under them were the first adults to finish YAREN's English and entrepreneurship classes.
Many had come to Uganda from Eastern DRC and other countries in conflict. When classes opened in May, the first lesson was how to say hello and introduce yourself. By December, they were preparing debates, handling money and telling the time in English. Getting there took far more than seven months.
01Before the classroom
The hard years: 2021 and 2022
To understand that day, you have to understand the years before it. For refugee families in Nakivale, the pandemic did not end when the headlines moved on. Its effects ran through 2021 and 2022, and new pressures piled on top.
What communities faced
Classrooms closed
Uganda's schools stayed shut for almost two years during COVID-19, reopening only in January 2022.
Less food on the table
Food rations in the settlements were cut as humanitarian funding fell, and casual work dried up in lockdowns.
More families arriving
Renewed fighting in Eastern DRC in 2022 sent more families across the border into Uganda's settlements.
How YAREN responded
- 2020
Hygiene materials, water filters, face shields and mental-health support for more than 2,000 people.
- 2021
Twenty water filters placed in schools and health centres; 32 women start liquid-soap businesses.
- 2022
Dignity kits for those most at risk, and GBV prevention built into the Ziranumbu Hub.
Relief kept people going, but it could not get them work. In Uganda, English is the language of school, clinics, government offices and most jobs. Many adults in Nakivale arrived speaking French, Swahili, Kirundi, Arabic or Tigrinya. Without English, the skills they had brought from home were hard to use, and simple tasks like filling in a form or speaking to a nurse meant waiting for an interpreter.
So in May 2023, with very little money and a lot of determination, YAREN opened English classes for adults.
02Seven months of class
A classroom with very little room
The first class opened with 38 adults, too little space and not enough teaching material. By June there were 41 learners, enough to split the group into two levels. Trainers built lessons around real life: buying food at the market, explaining an illness, talking to a child's teacher.
- adults on the first day, May 2023
- 38
- learners at the peak in June
- 41
- levels, 1A and 1B
- 2
- graduation day
- 22 Dec
May
Greetings and introducing yourself
Jun
Family, personal details and numbers
Jul
Verbs and building sentences
Aug
Present continuous, regular and irregular verbs
Sep
Preparing for debates
Oct
Weather, transport, clothes and food
Nov
Money, decimals and telling the time
03More than a language
Learning to run a business, too
English was only half of it. YAREN paired the classes with enterprise training, including a Mini MBA session in July supported by The MBA Academy, whose logo sits beside YAREN's on every certificate. The idea was simple: once you can speak to customers, you need to know how to run something worth selling.
In the same months, a YAREN handcraft group learned to make handbags from scratch. They produced 29. Nine went to a conference in Kampala as samples, and others were sold by learners, bringing in YAREN's first earned income. That money paid for electricity, water during the dry season and the mobile data needed to send reports.
04What it cost to stay
Not everyone reached the finish line
From September, attendance fell sharply. Rain disrupted the morning and evening sessions. A teacher fell ill and had to be replaced. Learners arrived late, or not at all, because work and family came first. Level 1B went from 29 learners to 8.
Of the Level 1B learners who started between May and July
- 3got jobs as primary school teachers
- 2moved up to Level 1A
- 2left the country for health reasons
- 12dropped out
Look again at that first number. Three learners left the class because they had found jobs teaching in primary schools. In a refugee settlement, that is what success looks like, and it is exactly why the class existed.
05Graduation day
22 December 2023
Those who stayed graduated just before Christmas. Each certificate, awarded by YAREN Organisation with The MBA Academy, recognised the learner's performance and perseverance in Basic English from June to December 2023.
It is a small piece of paper. In a place where a CV can decide whether you work, and where English decides whether you can speak for yourself, it is not small at all.
The mission on the banner behind them
“Creating a better society for high-risk communities.”
06The team
The people who held it together
None of this ran on a large budget. The team that taught these classes also paid off electricity debts with handbag money, borrowed mobile data to send documents, and kept going when the rain kept learners at home.
YAREN was founded by refugees. Its team knows what it means to start again in a new language, because they have done it.
07What came next
A first class, not the last
The class of 2023 was a beginning. English is still one of YAREN's core programmes, open to refugees and host community members with no English needed to start. Business training has grown as well: in 2025, working with the African Youth Action Network, YAREN trained more than 200 entrepreneurs across Kampala, Rhino Camp, Kyaka II, Kiryandongo and Kyangwali.
