On a bright Tuesday morning in Wakiso District, laughter fills the schoolyard of Divine Mercy Junior Primary School. Boys and girls chase one another across the dusty compound, their blue-and-white uniforms fluttering in the breeze.
In one corner, a group of pupils crowd around their teacher, acting out a short drama.
One boy snatches a girl’s exercise book and mocks her. Before the teasing escalates, the teacher halts the play and asks softly, “How do you think she feels?” The chatter fades. Then Moses, a shy 11-year-old, raises his hand.
“She feels bad… maybe angry,” he says. “I think it’s not good to treat her like that.”
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The teacher nods. What began as a playful skit has turned into a lesson on empathy, respect, and equality.
What looks like a small classroom activity is part of a quiet revolution spreading through peri-urban community schools like Divine Mercy. Teachers are helping boys unlearn harmful behaviours and understand why respect matters.
In the past, most lessons about safety focused only on teaching girls how to protect themselves. But now teachers have realised that real change must also come from boys.
By helping boys unlearn harmful behaviour and understand why respect matters, teachers are addressing the root cause of the problem, not just the symptoms. When boys learn empathy, equality, and respect, schools become safer and fairer for everyone.
Turning Classrooms into Change Hubs
Uganda continues to grapple with alarming levels of gender-based violence (GBV). According to a report by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and UN Women, over half of married women and girls aged 15-59 have experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner.
For decades, interventions focused on teaching girls to stay safe. Girls learn how to report and avoid violent encounters, placing the burden of safety on the girl child before she is old enough to understand sexual violence.
These lessons never focus on teaching boys how not to harm or where the responsibility of a second gender may lie in the perpetration of gender violence.
This is what headteacher, James Immekus, plans to change through the “Raising Respect in School” model. A model that employs respectful behaviour, setting clear expectations, and actively teaching and practicing empathy and social skills as prevention against future occurrences of gender-based violence.
“We realised we were always telling girls how to protect themselves, but we rarely told boys why respect matters,” he says. “so we flipped the script.”
In Luweero, Luweero Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Primary School is experimenting with a prevention-first approach. Here, the focus is on boys–not because girls don’t matter– but because changing boys’ attitudes early could stop violence before it begins.
Senior teacher Peter Mugisha says, “We don’t just tell them violence is bad. We ask questions, listen, and let them think. It’s about changing how they see themselves and others.”
At Divine Mercy, the curriculum now includes role-plays, peer mentoring, and group projects that explore fairness, empathy, and gender roles. Pupils debate chores, discuss how to walk home safely together, and learn to resolve conflicts without aggression.
According to Immekus, respect was a big challenge in schools so they had to look for other avenues to make boys understand gender abuses while at school.
“We rarely talked to boys about why they should not harm girls in the first place. That had to change.”
Visible Change in Attitudes
Twelve-year-old David, grinning as he sweeps the classroom, says the lessons reshaped his mindset.
“Before, I thought girls should do all the cleaning. Now I help too. It’s fair,” he says.
Teacher Jane Nansubuga confirms the difference.”We used to see boys pulling girls’ hair or calling them names almost every day. Now, other boys’ step in to stop it. That’s progress.”
Every afternoon, the pupils end the day in a circle, holding hands for prayer. To visitors, it looks ordinary. To headteacher Sarah Namatovu, it is transformation in motion.
“If even half of these boys grow up believing girls deserve respect, then we’ve already changed the future,” she smiles.
Wakiso District’s experiment builds on proven success stories. In Mityana District, the Good School Toolkit Good School Toolkit by Raising Voices reduced teacher-to-student physical violence by 42%, emotional or sexual violence by 41%, and bullying by 30%, according to a randomised controlled trial.
Before the introduction of the Good School Toolkit into schools curricula, about 52.7% of students reported experiencing physical violence from school staff.
Elsewhere in the sub-region, similar approaches are showing results. In Kenya, school-based gender programmes cut bullying by nearly a quarter. Studies show that boys trained in respect and empathy are twice as likely to intervene when they witness harassment..
Education specialist Samuel Okello of Teach for Uganda — an organisation working to make the country’s education system more equitable and inclusive — says the model’s strength lies in its repetition and visibility.
“Boys change when they see role models behaving differently. When they hear the same message consistently from teachers, parents, and peers it becomes part of who they are.”
Tabitha Suubi, the Violence Against Children Prevention Programme Manager at Raising Voices, says to sustain these ideas, the Good School Toolkit encourages the school administration to develop an anti-sexual violence policy.
When effectively implemented, such policies can transform the school culture, promote the safety of all learners and ensure the long-term sustainability of the programme.
Change Beyond the Classroom
Parents have noticed a ripple effect at home. Esther Nanteza beams as she recalls her son’s transformation. “He used to refuse chores, saying they were for girls. Now he helps his sisters.
He told me, ‘At school we are all the same.’ That touched me deeply,” she says.
In nearby Mityana District, father of three, John Ssemanda says he’s determined to raise sons who see equality as strength.
“I grew up where women had no voice. I don’t want my sons to inherit that thinking,” he says. “When boys respect their sisters and classmates, they will respect their future wives.”
For David Kato, a boda boda operator and community youth leader, the lesson is practical as it is moral.
“Teaching boys kindness is cheaper than repairing the damage caused by violence,” he says. “If we plant respect now, we won’t have to fight abuse later.”
Local church elder, Rev. Williams Tomusange, adds, “When we teach boys that girls are equal, we are saving both our daughters and our sons from becoming victims or perpetrators.”
According to Dr Harriet Nanyonjo, a psychologist with Makerere University, early intervention is crucial.
“Children form ideas about gender very young, by age seven many already believe boys are stronger or more deserving,” she explains. “If schools correct that early, we can reshape entire generations.”
A Ministry of Education official, Margaret Aciro, acknowledges that initiatives like Wakiso and Luwero District’s could be integrated nationally.
“Our new gender-responsive education policy supports programmes that promote equality. What we see in Wakiso gives us a model that can scale if we invest in teacher training and community engagement,” she says.
Building the Foundation Early: The Parenting For Respectability Programme
The Parenting for Responsibility programme (PfR) is another model that aims to build respectful and empathetic young men against gender violence, this time, at home.
It is a 16-session group-based parenting programme developed in Uganda, with families in mind, to address intimate partner violence, and violence against children on a community and national level, emphasising the reorientation of fathers as much as it does mothers.
Teachers like James Immekus have found that combining this approach with teaching respectability in schools provides a more effective and well-rounded adoption process for young boys.
“We realised that teaching them respect at school alone is not enough so we decided to work hand in hand with parents under their programme arenting for Responsibility which is a home-grown, culturally-relevant parenting intervention that aims to prevent violence against girls and so far the change is visible.”
A seven-year pre- and post evaluation study by the Child Health and Development Centre–and sponsored by the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF), the Netherlands OAK Foundation, and Glasgow University–assessed the programme’s impact on parent-child relationships; partner relationships; and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV); it showed that the programme reduced “harsh parenting” and spousal violence in semi-rural Ugandan communities.
Dr Godfrey Siu, lecturer and researcher, Child Health and Development Centre, Makerere University, and former team leader for this programme, says;
“The initiative was designed to tackle four key family-related drivers of gender-based violence (GBV): weak parental bonding and attachment; harsh parenting and corporal punishment; gender-biased child socialisation; and parental conflict”
Challenges That Persist
Despite the progress, execution hurdles remain within these programmes. For the Raising Respect in Schools programme, teachers are overstretched, funding is limited, and at home, patriarchal attitudes often undo school lessons.
“We can teach them here, but if the message at home is the opposite, it’s hard to make it stick,” admits teacher Mugisha.
Some parents even resist, claiming such lessons make boys “weak.” But teachers counter that respect is not weakness, it’s strength.
A scientific evaluation of the Parenting for Respectability programme conducted in 2021/22, in semi-rural Ugandan communities, reported a reduction, nearly by half, in domestic violence from parents to children and a decrease in the rate of spousal abuse and intimate partner violence in parents who attended more than 60% of the programme.
Sustainability is another concern. Many past initiatives lost momentum once donor funding ended. Posters from the Good School Toolkit still hang, faded, in some classrooms a reminder that social change takes time.
Also these initiatives had other limitations in scope. The Community Sensitisation and Legal Awareness campaigns implemented by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD) and NGOs such as FIDA-Uganda and Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET) focused on teaching communities about women’s rights, the Domestic Violence Act (2010), and the need to report abuse but they rarely addressed how family dynamics contribute to violence.
Child protection and social welfare programmes where Organisations like UNICEF, Save the Children, and World Vision supported community child protection committees and trained social workers to identify and report child abuse, often worked independently of parents, with limited focus on strengthening parent-child relationships.
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Gender rights advocate Lydia Tumusiime warns: “You don’t change attitudes like planting maize and harvest in three months. It takes years of consistent effort.”
The Beginning of Change
Still, there are reasons for hope. District Education Officer Fredrick Kiyingi Kinobe believes what’s happening in Wakiso could be the start of something bigger.
“If each district adapted this model, we could see a national shift. It starts with boys but it changes everyone,” he says.
It is encouraging to see that these two programmes run on similar core values. On the surface they might seem different: Parenting For Respectability Programme works with families to address intimate partner violence and violence against children on a community and national level, while Raising Respect in School is a model that centres respectful behavior, setting clear expectations, and actively teaching and practicing empathy and social skills at school.
However, these two programmes share the same related core values; promoting respect, limiting violence and building empathy. For real change to happen, these programmes are most effective when rolled out side by side, reinforcing each other’s goals.
Across Continents, Educators Are Rethinking How Boys Learn Respect.
It is important to note that these measures in Uganda fit in seamlessly with the global search for a solution against toxic masculinity, made accessible by social media and online access to the so-called manosphere. Most young boys now tend to violence and aggression towards girls in schools and online fuelled by misogynistic “men’s rights” influencers .
This learned behaviour experts have said are consequences of toxic masculinity and gendering spreading in online communities. Headteacher, James Immekus, is not aware of the Teaching Respect programme by the Thrive Alliance Group and their downloadable reference guide, but it is encouraging to see educators are organically connected–from East Africa to North America–in their resolve to create a kinder and empathetic generation.
For Brian Matovu, now 15 and in secondary school, the lessons linger. “I told my friends that insulting girls isn’t right. Some laughed, but I don’t care,” he says proudly.
As the sun sets over Wakiso, pupils gather in a circle, hands linked, voices rising in prayer. To some, it’s routine. But to their teachers, it’s proof that a quiet revolution is underway.
In a country where more than half of women endure violence as indicated by UN Women, the simple act of boys holding hands with girls, not as rivals, but as equals is more than a ritual.
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This story has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems, solutionsjournalism.org.
