School dropout is not only a poverty problem. It is a planning problem. Families in Uganda’s urban informal settlements often earn enough across a year to pay their children’s school fees — but fees arrive in January, April, and September, whether the family is ready or not. When they are not ready, the child stays home. Sometimes for a week. Too often, permanently.

SaveForward is IMS’s community-centred education financing work. It builds models that enable poor urban households to plan ahead, save collectively, and pay school costs on time — before a fee crisis forces a child out, not after.