Iowa City native champions education of Ugandan kids

By HEATHER McELVAIN
REGISTER CORRESPONDENT
September 18, 2004
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Her advice to others
"I entered the country feeling overwhelmed and out of my element, but by the time I left, it was like another home." - Elizabeth Whiston, who spent seven months teaching Ugandan children.

Iowa City native Elizabeth Whiston spent seven months teaching children in Uganda this year. It wasn't enough.
The Smith College senior wanted to keep helping when she returned, so she formed a nonprofit organization to help improve educational opportunities for Ugandan youth.
Whiston, an Iowa City West High School graduate, volunteered to teach youngsters in Kikaaya, a village near Kampala, Uganda's capital. She took a semester off from Smith College in Northampton , Mass., to teach in Uganda.

"I love Smith, but it's very academic, very insular," said Whiston, who is studying ancient Greek and Latin in college. "I needed a break. I wanted to do something that broadened my view experientially, rather than just academically."
Most of Uganda's youngsters feel lucky to be in school, Whiston said. In 1997, the Ugandan government passed a law allowing the first four children of a family to go to primary school for free.
Attending secondary school, however, is expensive, she said. The high fees force many students to quit school after sixth grade.

While in Uganda, Whiston decided to begin the nonprofit organization Education for Development. Her friends and her father, John Whiston, a law professor at the University of Iowa, helped her get the group set up.
To date, the group has provided a laptop computer for the headmaster of the school at which Whiston taught. It has also bought textbooks and supplies, and paid the school fees for 10 young women.
Whiston also set up a pen pal program between Ugandan students and West Branch Middle School and Iowa City West High School students.

Education for Development's next goal is to raise $40,000 by June 2006 to build a new secondary school in eastern Uganda. The current school in that region is housed in a mud brick building. Nearly $10,000 has been raised for the school.
John Whiston, secretary and treasurer of Education for Development, said he is proud of his daughter's efforts in Uganda.
"She has really made a difference," he said. "It's neat to see young people do such good work on their own."

Elizabeth Whiston said she learned a lot while she was in Africa.
"I went in expecting something so exotic, the National Geographic view of Africa," she said, "I got there and found that it's not really so different. The people, what they want, what they value, they're not so different. And most of them haven't seen an elephant or a giraffe unless they've been to the zoo."
When Elizabeth announced her plans to go to Uganda, her parents were immediately supportive, but her friends couldn't believe the usually fashion-conscious woman was leaving the comforts of home.

"I usually wear heels, I like New York City, I like wine and Brie, I'm just not a roughing-it kind of person," Elizabeth Whiston said. "There was a lot to get used to, but the people in my village were amazing. They were very welcoming."
She found the country enchanting as well.
"It was such a beautiful country. The Nile goes straight through it and it's so green," she said.
Whiston, one of only two nonlocal teachers at the school, taught English and literature to seventh- and eighth-graders.

"I had to go searching for poems by Ugandan or African authors," she said. "I learned a lot about African literature that I wasn't exposed to in my education."
Each of her classes had between 70 and 90 students, with only 30 textbooks to go around. Discipline was a problem at first.
"They screamed 'mzungu,' which means white," she said. "But it eventually got to the point where they behaved. Once you get to know a few students, they'll help keep their friends in line and it expands from there."