Flying Colors — Kolibri-Powered Blended Learning for Refugee Children in Palabek, Uganda

Palabek Refugee Settlement in Lamwo District, Northern Uganda, hosts tens of thousands of South Sudanese refugees alongside host communities. Many children arrived having spent years out of school due to COVID-19 closures and displacement, with very low baseline literacy and numeracy.

In 2022/23, Learning Equality, Hopelink Action Foundation Uganda (HAF-Uganda) and Amal Alliance, with support from the LEGO Foundation, piloted 'Flying Colors' in 4 schools with high drop-out rates to raise literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional confidence among refugee and host-community children through offline, playful, project-based blended learning.

The program combined Learning Equality's offline, differentiated-content platform Kolibri with Amal Alliance's 'Colors of Kindness' socio-emotional curriculum. 714 refugee and host-community learners (grades P3-P4) were enrolled across two consecutive 12-week cohorts, using 72 tablets, 4 solar-powered servers and over 1,000 Kolibri video and audio lessons; 11 teachers and 4 head teachers received structured training.

Matched pre/post assessments of 252 learners found statistically significant improvements at a 95% confidence level with a large effect size across every measure: word-reading rose from 20% to 100%, paragraph-reading from 6% to 73%, and 2-digit addition accuracy from 16% to 79%. Socio-emotional confidence also improved (e.g. agreement with 'I have goals and a plan to reach them' rose from 57% to 90%). Of the 330 learners who completed Cohort 1, 322 (98%) re-enrolled in mainstream primary school afterward. Teacher comfort with technology rose from none reporting 'very comfortable' at baseline to 75% by endline, and 88% felt confident facilitating playful learning.

The evidence comes from a single-arm pre/post design without a control group, at a small scale (4 schools), and re-enrollment data for the second cohort was not yet available at the time of reporting. The partners describe Palabek as on a 'pathway to sustainability' while seeking funding to expand to new contexts.