Training students to set up enterprises
in Education, Agriculture & Tourism

Community College in Kinkiizi

The vital link between school and employment is the Great Lakes Community College, a vocational college that produces about 200 graduates a year.

The institution was established with the financial help of the Uganda Christian Development Mission in the USA and the Friends of Kirima Parents Primary School in the UK.

This college, located in a poor rural community in south-western Uganda was in turn established in 2003 after observing that while our initial partner, Kirima Parents Primary School and her sister primary schools were doing a tremendous job educating underprivileged children of ages 3-14, their future remained uncertain if no institution was established to provide vocational education for them to acquire skills for penetrating the highly competitive workplace.

The college prepares students for the three main work opportunities in the area, with a focus on enabling graduates to start their own enterprises:

• Education, where trained nursery and primary teachers move on to start nursery and primary schools
• Agriculture, where graduates will identify marketable products and establish producer groups and value addition facilities for successful market penetration
• Tourism, where graduates will form businesses to establish camp sites and offer services as tour providers and guides for the growing tourist population who are visiting Uganda to watch birds, primates and other flora and fauna