Teacher passionate about skilling others

About to leave formal work. Joe Billy Kisozi, a tutor at Ndegeya Core Primary Teacher’s College, Masaka has set up a farm to skill the youth in his community.  PHOTO/WILSON KUTAMBA
 

What you need to know:

Joe Billy Kisozi, 59, is a tutor at Ndegeya Core Primary Teacher’s College in Masaka. He will retire in February 2022. For his retirement, Kisozi has set up a skill centre for the youth in his community. Wilson Kutamba finds out more about Kisozi.

From among fruit trees and flourishing plantation on his nearly half an acre of land Joe Billy Kisozi glances at us, then welcomes us. 

“Welcome son,” the teacher says. He takes us to comfortable seats on his verandah  before we get talking.

The 59-year-old who lives with his wife and child in his newly constructed house in Kiyimbwe Village, Nyendo – Mukungwe Municipality in  Masaka City,  says he will turn the home into a skilling centre.

Kisozi says he was raised in Kyebando, a suburb of Kampala on Gayaza Road by his father Salongo George William Kateregga,  a medical assistant  at Mulago National Referral Hospital and his mother Tereza Nanyonga  Mugaba, a home maker, before they went back to Kyasonko Village in Lwengo, their ancestral home.
 
Humble beginnings
Kisozi started school in1967 at Akwatempora Kindergarten, the current Kiswera Primary School and by this time, he was living with his mother after she separated with his father barely two years after his first birthday. She became the breadwinner.

 “After my parents separation, my mother moved us to Kiswera Village in Kisekka Sub-County in Lwengo District in 1964 to start a new life because livelihood in the city was becoming unaffordable for us,” Kisozi recounts.

 “When we moved to the village, we engaged in agriculture for survival because my mother with the help of our maternal uncles was looking after six children. She ensured  we got an education and other basic needs,” he says.

In 1969, he went to St Vincent Boys, Kyamaganda in Lwengo District before joining St Bernard’s College Kiswera for secondary school education. Although his education was later interrupted by NRA Bush War, in 1990 he graduated with a diploma in Secondary Education.
 Progress
 He says after graduation he went back to Kampala to look for a teaching job. Luckily, Kisozi was recruited and  posted to Chwa II Memorial College, Namagoma in 1991.

While at Chwa II College, together with teachers and old boys of St Bernard’s College Kiswera, they founded Progressive Secondary School Lubaga as an A-Level school in 1992.

“The school produced prominent people in the country such as Minister Kiwanda Ssubi, former Lwengo MP and Uganda Local Government Association president George Mutabazi,” he recalls.
 He said although the school business was going well, out of 10 proprietors seven including him left due to misunderstandings.
In 1999, he moved to St Timothy Mengo, Kisenyi together with his comrades before it became Central Academy. He said most of their former students at Progressive SS Lubaga joined the school. This was not without a challenge.

“Around 2002, we laboured to register the school and bought land in Gayaza where the current St Mbaga stands but in 2003, there were misunderstandings as well which prompted my resignation. I left my shares with the school,” he recounts.

He says although he hustled to have private investment he was equally part timing at his government teaching job and in 2005, he was promoted to  tutor and transferred to Ndegeya Core Primary Teacher’s College in Masaka. There, he was a teacher of Art.

 “In 2014, Unicef picked me as national trainer in material development through using local materials in the environment,” he says.
Retirement 
In his preparation for retirement he has already started on projects that will skill the youth in his community.

“When I left Kampala in 2004, I bought about 10 acres of land in Lwengo District. I have turned this piece of land into a skilling development centre based in agroforestry majoring in fruit trees with a component of herbal medicine,” he says.

Kisozi reveals the project in Lwengo is a branch of Mugaba Farm with its headquarters in Nyendo- Mukungwe Masaka District, which was named after his late mother.

His vision is to see a change in immediate neighbours by training people how to use small pieces of land to get food and medicine.

He says Mugaba Farm will train farmers in Masaka and monitor their work emphasising that he is sure when people appreciate the project their livelihoods will be improved.

 He says he is converting a home to open a skilling centre  because it is his call to ensure that knowledge and skills are passed on to all people indiscriminately.

 “Ever since I started the above projects  in Lwengo and Masaka, no agriculture officer has  supervised our work  but a multitude of famers have already benefited,”Kisozi says. 

More than 200 youths have been trained at these farms. 
“Beneficiaries bring friends and I recruit others by word of mouth,” he  explains. Other projects at the farm include poultry which he says will breed more local chicken as the breed might face extinction. Kisozi says he will retire on February 22, 2022.

Two cents
He challenges youth to use their  time to work for their elderly life rather than waste much of their time in employment and expensive livelihoods.

“My appeal to the youth is to have  prior planning towards their retirement by establishing projects where they will retire to rather than depend on employment and they live a disgruntled life after work,” Joe Billy  Kisozi says.