Talks and Workshops

The primary mission of Mango Tree Educational Enterprises is to provide Ugandan teachers with high quality, durable, and inexpensive, teaching tools. These learning aids are designed to meet the particular needs of the village classroom. They are made from local resources: grain sacks, recycled slipper material, bottle tops, and old jerry cans. They are priced so that even head teachers on a tight budget can afford them. They are specifically made to teach Uganda’s national primary school curriculum. And best of all, even a teacher whose classroom is under a mango tree will find the tools useful and appropriate.About fifty people in four workshops make all of Mango Tree’s products. Mango Tree runs two of the workshops, but the other two are local NGO’s: one works with women with HIV/AIDS and the other is a group of disabled people. Thus, Mango Tree is an important income generating business for many formerly marginalized people.In his presentation for the Sustainable Resources Conference, Mango Tree’s founder and director, Craig Esbeck, will discuss how, by providing schools with affordable, engaging, and culturally relevant teaching tools, this enterprise is having an impact on larger educational reform initiatives in Uganda. He will also share Mango Tree’s latest vision: to identify and bring together innovative classroom teachers in Uganda so that they can share their successes, learn from each other, and become models for teachers throughout the country.