19-Year old Charity Kengozi is a trainee of Interlocking Soil Stabilizing Brickmaking (ISSB) at Kyema Technical College in Masindi. For 5 days, students are taught to produce building blocks with a pressing machine. This contrasts with the traditional method of baking bricks in a firewood oven. As the ISSB blocks don’t require firewood they pose an eco-friendly production alternative, hereby contributing to a greener economy.

“I am taking this training to prepare myself for an engineering education and to widen my thinking. Before I never knew that you can make a brick simply from sand and soil.” says Charity. After the training she wants to make such blocks for her family, to construct a commercial space. Charity would even like to build her future house with ISSB bricks because, thanks to its shape, only one fifth of the usual amount of cement is needed. This makes it a cheap alternative.

Nowadays Charity’s family is proud of her for attempting a carrier in engineering and construction. But that was not always the case. “My parents did not approve of me doing this training because not many girls do it. My uncle helped to convince them by giving examples of girls who make good money from engineering.” Instead, Charity’s parents wanted her to become a nurse and pressured her into taking entry exams. But after Charity got accepted into the nursing training she refused to start. Only then her parents agreed to let her pursue her engineering passion.

The ISSB blocks produced by the trainees are used to build boarding facilities and lavatories for girls at Kyema Technical college. After the training the pressing machine will be given to the college to continue the initiative. This investment should encourage more girls for careers in construction, as nowadays out of the 22 ISSB  trainees only 7 are girls.

These instant trainings are organized by Enabel’s Support to Skilling Uganda (SSU) project, as part of the Skills Development Fund. The aim is to provide relevant, practical and qualitative instant-trainings of 10 to maximum 100 hours.