Thinking back to1984, Beatrice Ayuru Byaruhanga remembers two things about her primary school days: a white and blue school uniform and her bare feet.

"Walking around barefooted was the order of the day...I wore my first pair of shoes, when I was starting secondary school. It took me a while to get used to walking with them. The most expensive thing I wore at that time was a pair of sandals but [President] Amin was in power and had passed a decree saying you couldn't put on sandals when going to town, therefore the only option was walking bare-footed."

Byaruhanga, founder of the Lira Integrated School, is the winner of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 2010 Empretec Women in Business Award. The Empretec Training Program works to promote women entrepreneurs. To help with this mission, the program has established centers in 32 of the world's developing countries. Awards are given to women who best exemplify the spirit of entrepreneurship and global citizenry.

Growing up in Uganda under the rule of then President Idi Amin, Byaruhanga watched as her country faced war and economic devastation. Those years defined her childhood and spurred her quest to increase the quality of education for the young people of Uganda.

"It was in secondary [school] that challenges were there, especially with the war in northern Uganda. We had no desks to sit in, no learning aid, no textbooks, win-doors without shutters, not enough teachers for all subjects -- yet you are expected to compete nationally with schools in non war affected areas."

Even as the war ended, Byaruhanga saw many of the same destructive narratives from her childhood repeated in Uganda's new public education system. While financial access to primary school education was extended in 1997 under then President Museveni's Education Strategic Investment Plan (ESIP), the investment of one quarter of the country's GDP on education continued to leave children behind. In its 2001 report on the state of the country's school system, Uganda's Bureau of Statistics found that only 21% of girls and 22% of boys are enrolled in secondary school. With such low enrollment rates and troubling attendance records, many Ugandan children are still not getting an education that allows them to compete academically with countries throughout the world.

"The quality of education offered was so poor. Many of the good teachers left for the city to go to better paying districts. For girls in particular, the attitude of the people towards their education was so negative. Girls were not looked at as people who could make it thru education and therefore I had a conviction that if I open a mixed school, and equal attention is given to both sexes, I could prove to the public that the girls are very intelligent and can compete favorably with boys."

After years of working as a teacher and tirelessly seeking reform from the public system, Byaruhanga decided to venture out on her own to provide a better quality of education for Uganda's youth.

"I felt I could serve better in the private sector where I have control over other resources and make things happen faster than the bureaucratic way of handling things in the public sector. But I had no capital nor did I have collateral to get a loan or even a business to earn from. I knew the only way to go was to do what was within my reach."

When Byaruhanga's father gave her piece of his land to raise profits for the school, many in Lira were outraged. "The clan never believed a woman should own anything but thankfully, my father helped me by standing in the gap when the clan members swore that blood would flow if he gave his land to me." Choosing to grow a garden full of cassava, Byaruhanga worked to raise money for the school she had in mind.

"I had nothing to make anybody believe in me and all I could do was to use my own energy to plough the garden. The income I raised from the cassava was used for making 25 wheel-barrows that I hired out to wheel-barrow pushers at $6.25 per day and I would save this."

After three years of selling her goods at makeshift canteens and saving, Byarunhanga had enough to begin building the Lira Integrated School.

While the initial capital provided a boost, there were still many hurdles to overcome, many of them from the very community she was trying to serve.

"The district officials never believed in me because of being a woman...I was undermined because I was a attempting to do what even the rich men have not ventured into. I had to request my husband to help me go through the process by putting him at the forefront. I felt segregated from members of the family and rejected too. I was seen as a mad person venturing into an impossible project."

Ironically, many in the community saw Byaruhanga's ambition as an unfortunate result of her own schooling.

"Many in the community at that time saw what I was doing as strange and were just waiting to see my downfall since they had grown up with me and come from the same background of poverty. They thought I was crazy and that could it be the degree I got from the university that was disturbing me and making me over ambitious. It was not until the buildings reached some level that the community started believing in what I was doing."

Now, many of her doubters have come to believe. Since opening in 2000, the Lira Integrated School has grown to include nursery, primary and secondary schools, and boarding quarters. The school serves 1,500 students and subsidizes 10 percent of the children attending.

The Lira School offers academic as well as vocational courses with the emphasis on creating citizens as well as students.

"We look at the total upbringing of the child," says Byaruhanga. "That is, the formal education is of quality, the vocational side is catered for by training them in skills that in case they fall out of school, they can never be stranded in life."

After living through what is now taught in her student's history classes, Byaruhanga says she has seen a fundamental shift in the way that her students learn about Uganda.

"During the early age of Uganda, history was more of African traditional society and it was just about discipline, respect, uncles, aunties, relatives and the past events like the Old Stone Age, Middle Stone Age etc. Today history has been included as a compulsory subject, which was not the case when I was growing up. For these children, history is no longer just the classics, it is in everything. For Africa now, history means digging closer to our destination as nation states and looking critically how they were formed instead of memorizing dates and phrases like fables."

As the students at her school examine their nation's past, Mrs. Byaruhanga hopes they will be part of changing its future. With a goal to build the Lira Integrated School into an internationally recognized university, she is working to expand the school's focus on research, innovation, and ultimately, eradicating poverty. With her determination, it is possible Mrs. Byarunhanga may help write a new chapter in Uganda's history.