Giving Children A Chance

Mirembe Deniz, Uganda

My name is Mirembe Deniz and I am from Uganda. I am a teacher, football coach, and a community worker. I work with schools and rural communities to increase their children’s access to education. I am currently working with teenage schoolgirls in the Mayuge and Kaliro rural districts in Uganda. 

I work with these children through football clubs and menstrual health clubs that I have established in their schools with their teachers and using support from The Huracan Foundation. Through football I support children in school to keep studying and acquire a meaningful education.

I got involved in football way back as a young girl. I was energetic and aggressive. I enjoyed rough games and wanted to be a boy. As a child, a girl associating with boy games was a taboo. I was always looked at as a social misfit. Sometimes my mother would punish me for playing with boys. So I grew up trying to avoid things that would attract punishment. 

However as I became older, I realised that I could still be a girl and play football. When I joined my high school, it had a girls' football team. I joined the team but I could not enjoy the game as I hoped to. There were still those stereotypes about girls playing football because they were lesbians. Playing football in school meant sacrificing lots of school time and the teachers did not value sports. Most of them viewed it as a waste of time. They would not help sports students rearrange an examination or class that they missed.

My father was such a disciplinarian that I could not risk a slight accusation of any indiscipline. I was afraid of ever having an issue in school, so I could not play. I dropped out but I kept supporting my friends who stayed on the team. No one in my family was playing football then. 

But I loved the game for its capacity to engage young people and enable them to express themselves while at school. Knowing the opportunities and benefits that lay in the game for young people motivated me to join the Huracan Foundation as a volunteer, so that I could support these children to benefit from the game as they progressed in their education. I have been trained as a football coach by The Huracan Foundation and I am still training to become a better one. 

What has been your teaching journey?

I started teaching way back in my Senior Six vacation, when I assisted teachers at my high school. I also taught through my undergraduate university days at Makerere University to earn money for my tuition and upkeep. My real teaching career as a professional began in 2019 after university at St Michael International Secondary School. 

However, during the COVID 19 lockdown in 2020, I saw an advert from Teach for Uganda looking for young professionals to join their teaching fellowship, which involved working with rural schools. I had come from a rural community myself and the lockdown on schools in Uganda largely affected children in rural communities. I was compelled to join the fellowship and worked for two years at St. Kizito Primary School Kanyabwina in Mayuge. 

Mayuge is one of the poorest rural communities in Uganda, characterised by high drop out rates due to poverty, teenage pregnancies, early marriages, and child labour. Having come out of such conditions myself, I believed I owed these children my service to ensure that they have access to education.

What did you try to show with the photos? Was there any wider meaning with the photos?

The people in the photos portray the children of St. Kizito Primary School, Kanyabwina. The school is a Universal Primary Education (UPE) school in Mayuge district in Uganda. It is in one of the most vulnerable communities in Uganda. The photos were taken at the school playgrounds and at the school compound.

I tried to show the benefits of football to schoolchildren, especially the aspects of teamwork and creating friends. These contribute to the larger goal of increasing children’s interest in attending school, thus their ability to achieve an education. 

You can see boys and girls working together. I love the photos where the children come together and converge around the ball to solve a certain issue. These are the activities that encourage children to keep attending school and thus attain an education.

Football bridges the gap between teachers, the community, and the school children. All these parties are able to come together and talk. It creates more open conversations that might impact the children’s ability to attend school. The wider meaning is using football to engage communities and impact children through education.

What is your favourite photo? Why?

My favourite photo is where girls are playing football in dresses. As someone who is passionate about women’s empowerment, this is a sign of breaking barriers and going above the expectations of what a young girl can do. If she can play football, just like the boys, then she has a right to stay in school and have a career just like the boys.

What role does football play in your community and in Uganda?

All the children are living in one of the most underserved communities in Uganda. These children are raised in very poor families by poor parents who never went to school. They are not motivated or inspired by anyone in their communities to attend school. For them just showing up at school is such a big sign of courage and enthusiasm. I was once like them and their stories inspire me to keep working with them.

Women and girls in my community have less or no opportunities due to the patriarchal dominance of the community. They are not given a chance and even when there is a chance, very few are willing to tap into the opportunities due to fear and lack of belief in themselves.

In Uganda, football is not as supported as in other more developed countries, but the few football teams and academies that are available have played a big role in building communities through teamwork and collaboration. Football teams have helped to teach skills to the youth and keep them engaged and away from other dangerous things like crime. Football restores peace in communities and promotes unity. Young people are able to learn resilience, patience and problem solving skills.

What impact has football and The Huracan Foundation had on you and your community?
I have developed in so many ways as a leader and an educator. I have learnt how to use football to impact a community and how to get pupils to realise their talents in school. I have gained more knowledge and skills about project management and implementation.

While I was working as a Teach for Uganda fellow, I realised that football as a sport would help me mitigate problems of school drop out and absenteeism among children due the spirit of camaraderie and involvement that football promotes in schools. I started a football club for both girls and boys. I was able to apply for funding from The Huracan Foundation which I used to boost these clubs. 

Through the football clubs, I was able to reduce the daily absenteeism by 10% among boys and girls because school attendance by football club members was mandatory. Most of the girls were also able to complete school with very low cases of school drop out. I worked with the community leaders, parents, and teachers who volunteered to train the children and also carry out home visits to all children in the program. 

What does football mean to you? What ambitions do you have for the future?

Football is a very good sport for promoting children’s talent and education. I look forward to continuing to use football to promote children’s talents in school, empower them, and increase children’s access to education using football.

I am currently studying a postgraduate diploma in project planning and management at the Uganda Management Institute and I am hoping to soon begin my postgraduate studies in Education at University of Cape Town in South Africa.

What is the future for football in Uganda? What would you like to change?

The future is promising as more people are engaged in the game and are engaging other people in it. I would like to change the seriousness with which the sport is treated in Uganda. Many young people in Uganda are talented footballers and if given a chance, they could make a fortune out of it. I would like to promote sports to a professional level where talented players can earn from it.