The Enhancing Secondary Students Civic Participation Through Mock Elections project empowers secondary school students with civic education through mock elections. The project is implemented in one of the divisions of Kampala. The project identifies a girls’ school to work with and a school for young persons with disabilities to ensure inclusion and mainstreaming. The third school that is chosen has both girls and boys, with and without disabilities.  The mock election takes on the format of an election. The elections are designed to give the students a better understanding of democratic institutions like local government, electoral commission, police among others. The project design is adopted from the country’s national voting system and procedures. Students will vote on a copy of real balloting measures, real candidates, and on real paper in the Mock Election. The project runs school-based election campaigns targeting the rest of the school community and outside the community to include girls and boys, parents and leaders to create more awareness on civic and voter education. The concept of election observing is introduced and strengthened to enable and empower students to know the importance of protecting their votes until a winner is announced.  The project empowers girls to participate and take on leadership positions with the long term goal of preparing and building their confidence to stand for elective positions in future. It enhances the capacity of girls to express their views themselves and be particularly interested in the political and electoral process. As their capacities develop, the students propose action plans as leaders and active participants in the democratic processes of the country.

Expanding young people participation in informed civic and electoral processes 

Civic participation in Africa is largely left to the older generation as the young people find themselves uninterested in politics or locked out of politics for one reason or another. When they are involved, it is rarely from an informed position but from the euphoria created by politicians which is always marred in lies and misinformation. Sensitise Uganda, set up Enhancing secondary students civic participation through mock elections project, to change the narrative by promoting informed involvement in civic participation through nonpartisan and educative mock elections as a tool to enhance their civic participation in Kampala district hence teaching students to be informed voters.   Beyond that, the project specifically empowered students with political, civic and voter knowledge providing an opportunity to participate as candidates, speech writers and election observers and went ahead to provide the students with a platform to engage in active citizenship through deliberating on the technicalities and issues involved in a real election. Nearly 500 students voted and expressed interest in voting in the annual Mock Election during the project cycle, with some of the students sharing their experiences through these voices of change below 

“I started following national issues on TV because of the enlightenment I got from Sensitise Uganda,” said Douglas, a student at Progressive Senior Secondary School Kitintale. “As a citizen, I feel I am a politically transformed Ugandan because of what Sensitize Uganda did for us and also specifically for me as an individual through what I learnt from the project.  He noted that the exercise provided him a platform to participate in the National elections of January 2021 as a polling assistant.  As a result of the skills gained from the project he recalls, ‘I took charge in the training in order to enlighten others on areas where there were no proper clarifications. Outside our school, I took part in providing Civic awareness to my village mates about the importance of elections, safety and security of every person in the area during and after elections”.  He was able to put in practice the skills from the project.   

Douglas went further to share that, “I would love to thank Sensitize Uganda for the political transformation you have instilled in me. To me this project was a political revolution. I had never participated in the national election exercise before but with your help during the civic education mock elections, my political awareness was taken to higher heights.” 

For another student, Auma Patricia, she says, “It gave me a platform to participate in the January 2021 national elections as a polling agent. This position enabled me to air out and share with the other polling agents the information and skills I was given and taught by Sensitise Uganda for instance the guidelines and procedures during the election process”