Teacher: Francis Bizoza Bigirimana
Meet the teacherLinks
Francis Bizoza Bigirimana
Francis (The African Travelling Teacher) is a Pan Africanist and education enthusiast, a project-based curriculum designer at Learning Equality. He is travelling across Africa with a passion for teaching and exploration. Francis offers a unique approach to education and shares fresh perspectives on African history, culture, and nature. He is a LEAP Social Entrepreneur Fellow at Solve-MIT and graduated from Makerere University with a degree in Education. He is a Master Teacher Program alumnus under the ALforEducation Network of the African Leadership Academy an experience that gave him a deep appreciation for the extreme challenges that teachers and students face on a daily basis.
Overview
Francis ‘The African Travelling Teacher’ traverses remote areas of East and Central Africa by road on a mission to offer a unique approach to education and share fresh perspectives on African history, culture, and nature to inspire a network of teachers who are informed and appreciate their continent’s potential. In each new country, Francis engages learners in school sessions that focus on topics such as global citizenship, sustainable development goals, climate change and environmental conservation using localised resources.
Theory of Change
Francis aims to connect young people to nature and to put them at the forefront of a crusade to promote positive environmental conservation practices that mitigate climate change. The project also utilizes localized materials such as storybooks to engage young people and guide them to identify localized solutions to the problem of environmental degradation in their area. The young people initiate activities to mitigate these issues. The project aims to also improve collaboration on climate change and environmental conservation projects between teachers and learners across the African continent.
Approach and Actions
The project involves Francis traversing East and Central Africa by road creating awareness of climate change by visiting remote schools and engaging learners in story reading sessions and discussions on climate change related issues. After the reading sessions, the learners are guided to identify practical solutions to local climate change issues and to start to put them into action. These projects then continue after Francis leaves the school, with a teacher from the school guiding the learners to implement their projects.
Francis has made it his mission to access remote and hard-to-reach schools ensuring that the teachers in these hard to reach areas are engaged in climate change education. Francis also uses social media to spread his message, broadcasting episodes of his activities on youtube and encouraging engagement and discussion through social media.
Francis usually holds his sessions as part of the school’s pre-existing climate change extracurricular clubs. The sessions often attract approximately 50 students and these students are then encouraged to disseminate their learning to other students creating a ripple effect.
Impact
The African Traveling Teacher has reached over 5000 learners between the ages of 10 and 15 in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. Learners have conducted reading and discussion sessions, participated in tree planting and conducted community outreach activities. Some of these outreach activities have involved music, dance and drama shows to create awareness and call for action on activities that degrade the environment such as deforestation; wetland encroachment; poaching; tree cutting for charcoal and firewood; and calling for the adoption of clean or renewable energy sources. The African Traveling Teacher youtube channel has many subscribers and the videos on the site have many views, this demonstrates the interest in Francis’ work.