Books, Pens and Possibility: Gilbert Kevin's Gift to Divine Mercy School, Fort Portal

In the hills around Fort Portal, in western Uganda, the school day begins the way it does in classrooms everywhere: small hands reaching for pencils, young eyes searching the wall for something worth learning. Yet for many rural schools, the basic tools of that ritual are never guaranteed. A notebook can be a luxury. A pen may be shared between several children. A classroom chart that turns the alphabet or a multiplication table into something vivid may be missing altogether.

On 19 March 2026, at Divine Mercy Nursery and Primary School in Kiko, that gap narrowed. Schoolbooks, pens and teaching charts arrived as a gift from Gilbert Kevin Jimmy Kwizera, a Ugandan-born humanitarian leader and international consultant whose name is usually associated with a very different cause: caring for cancer patients.

A Gift Without Ceremony

Mr. Kwizera did not travel to Kiko for the occasion. He is based in the United Arab Emirates, where he oversees humanitarian projects that span borders, and the donation reached the school without a podium or a ribbon to cut. That absence says something about his approach. His work, by his own account, favours long-term value over publicity, and the gift was framed as part of his commitment to supporting education and community development rather than as a moment for the cameras.

The school noticed all the same. It thanked him warmly, and the pupils celebrated the arrival of their new supplies. A video from the day, titled "School Charity Support," forms part of the public record of the gift, a reminder that generosity does not need an audience in the room to be felt by those on the receiving end.

Why Books and Pens Matter

It is easy to dismiss school supplies as modest. They are not. A child with a book can practise reading at home. A child with a pen can complete the written exercises a teacher sets. A teacher with charts can explain an idea once and let the classroom wall repeat it all term. Supplies like these quietly lift the quality of every lesson that follows, and they do so for every child in the room, not just one.

For a nursery and primary school, where the foundations of literacy and numeracy are laid, that effect matters even more. The years in which children learn to read shape everything that comes after. Equipping a school to teach well is an investment whose returns arrive slowly, over decades, in the form of graduates, professionals and parents who value learning.

The Same Philosophy, a Different Classroom

Readers who know Mr. Kwizera's story will recognise the thinking behind the donation. He is the founder of the Cancer Charity Foundation and Haven Welfare, NGOs based in Uganda. Through the Foundation, he supports rural cancer patients with housing, meals and psychosocial aid near Kampala's cancer hospitals, so that rent and hunger do not force them to abandon treatment. The insight is practical: what stands between a person and a good outcome is often not the main event, but the hardship surrounding it.

Education follows the same logic. A capable child can be held back not by ability but by the absence of a notebook. By removing small obstacles, Kwizera's work makes larger goals reachable. Whether the setting is a hospital ward or a classroom, the principle holds: meet people's practical needs, and do so with dignity. The Foundation, for instance, is described as avoiding the habit of treating patients as cases, preferring respect. A school donation is a different kind of act, but it carries the same spirit, treating the pupils of Kiko as young people with potential who deserve the right tools.

A Long View of Giving

Gilbert Kwizera's philanthropy is not new. Profiles trace his mission to a childhood spent witnessing poverty and illness. In 2006 he met Salim Bwagu, a patient who had endured years of relapse, and his charity went on to cover the remaining treatment costs; Salim completed his full course in 2007. In February 2026, Uganda's Daily Express profiled his cancer charity work, reporting that it supports hundreds of patients each year. Weeks later, the same commitment surfaced in a rural schoolyard.

Taken together, these moments sketch a man who looks for where help is needed rather than where it will be noticed. From a patient's bedside to a classroom in Kiko, the pattern is consistent: identify the practical barrier, then remove it quietly.

What Comes Next

Gifts like this one are most powerful when they inspire others. A single delivery of books and pens will not transform an education system, but it can change a term, a classroom, a child's confidence. It also sends a message to the Ugandan diaspora, to local businesses and to neigh-bours alike: schools like Divine Mercy are worth investing in, and the investment need not be large to matter. Each notebook handed out is a vote of confidence in the children who will fill it.

In Kiko, pupils now have a few more tools for the work of growing up. Somewhere a child will write the first full sentence in a fresh notebook. Somewhere a wall chart will make a number finally click. These are small stories, but small stories are how communities are built. Books, pens and possibility: that is the gift, and the hope behind it