"The schools are our major partners," says Barbara Kaija, the paper’s features editor. "In the pilot project, we sell the newspaper to schools at half price and then give the registered students (aged between 9 and 11 years old) a work sheet with twelve activities. They should do the activities at their own leisure either at home or at school. The aim of the activities is just to ensure that they are reading. At the end of the project they will get certificates and a few token gifts like t-shirts," she says.

The project involves 1,800 children from 11 registered schools in Kampala, the capital, who receive the paper twice a week.

"Since this is the first time we are doing a Newspaper in Education project we limited the campaign to just eleven schools because we did not want to be overwhelmed," Ms Kaija says.

She explains that The New Vision chose schools which were close to the capital city, "so the transport costs to the school to distribute the paper and materials was minimal."

Along with economies made on the transportation costs, the paper did not have to spend a lot to organise the programme. "The only materials I bought were glue and scissors. The schools paid for the paper at half price," Ms Kaija says.

The newspaper has also requested that parents help their children with any challenging activities and to buy copies of the paper to enable their children to read more. The aim of the campaing is to "make The New Vision a household name," Ms Kaija says.

"Ugandan schools lack reading material," she says, so that the campain "supports the national educational system by offering the teachers the skills of using a newspaper as a teaching tool."

"We, however, hope that in the long run we shall team up with some advertisers to reach the more disadvantaged schools. So far our observations are that the poor schools cannot afford the paper at half price," she says.