My name is Lubangakene Samuel, a member of the Butterfly project and a second-year student of Kyambogo University, pursuing a Bachelor of Information Systems. I am passionate about computers and I am talented in fine art. When I was in primary school, I used to draw a lot because I had plenty of time and I loved drawing,most especially, using the color pencils made me feel that I could do anything. When I reached primary four in 2009, I was recruited into the Butterfly project. In Uganda, children are not used to computers, so my first computer lesson was playing games and the first game was Dungeons & Dragons. This made me very excited and made me love computer games such that I could play the whole day, but as the levels became more difficult sometimes l lost interest in the games as I couldn't finish the quest. As we went on, however, we were getting more training from the project about problem-solving, change-making, social entrepreneurship, and running community sessions on different problems that our communities are facing. These strengthened me to try to solve the quests in the games and, with time, there was no quest that I couldn’t complete and no problem was too big anymore. On the other hand, I continued to practise fine art and improve my skills. I did a project on fine art called the Posho and Bean Campaign. This project was about changing diet in schools as many schools in Uganda prepare only posho (maize meal) and kidney beans for the students and this project was to create awareness of the benefits of having a balanced diet in schools. I managed to reach out to some schools, including St. Joseph’s primary school, Creamland primary school and my high school, Uphill College Mbuya, and I spoke to the school administration resulting in a change in the diet where they started to change the diet once in a week and give the students
some other foods instead of posho and beans. When some of these schools changed their meals, I was very happy to create a great impact on the lives of many other children for the first time. Passion for computers and fine art went on growing in me as I reached high school, when I took both fine art and computer studies. Playing games become part of my life. I went from playing computer games to board games and I was always at the top because I had learned problem-solving skills and techniques which made me always win. Then during my senior three, I had to drop off some subjects and choose either computer studies or fine art and I was in a dilemma because I love both subjects but could not take both. This took me a week to figure out what to do, but when I thought more about it then I figured out that I can do both subjects by taking one. I decided to take computer studies but, in my mind, I know that I can still do fine art using computer skills. One day as we were playing one of the board games, Agricola, I figured out that the same problem-solving skills that we use
to win the games and complete quests and challenges in the computer games, can be used to solve some of the challenges that our communities are facing. I came up with the Children Mind Development project. This was to equip young children from the slum areas around Kampala with computer basics and develop their problem-solving skills through games and puzzles like Sudoku. Children love playing games but the project was to make them to both have fun and gain problem-solving skills, so that they could apply these in the real world to create change and solve some other problems that they are facing in their communities like poor hygiene, scrap collecting, stone quarrying and drug abuse.

After completing Advanced level, I joined the University and the choice
of courses to do was still based on my passion for ICT as well as for art. So I had many options for ICT courses but I decided on Bachelor of Information Systems, because in this course we deal with information and data to provide solutions to the problems of an organization. My main aim is to learn more computer skills to help to solve some of the problems that our local communities are facing using the technology. One of the problems is the water shortage in our
rural areas in: I plan to start up a local water pump using solar. The Children Mind Development Project is also to be put to another level where we will start graphics designing with the older group, and web development.

I am starting my second semester of the second year on 3^rd
January of 2022 and the course is for three years. I have managed to complete the first year successfully though the issue of tuition fees has always been a challenge because, in 2019, I lost my mother, and my father is the only one trying to struggle to provide for the family. This has made it hard for him as
a single parent to afford to pay for my University tuition since we are many in the family. We are a family of six children which is very challenging. This semester I am supposed to pay £295 for tuition and second year examination fees, paid in advance. The second semester examination is to begin on the 14^th
of March.