When Samallie Kasirye sits at her pottery wheel and plunges her hands into the cold, wet clay she's instantly transported back home.
The Ugandan-born pottery teacher comes from a long line of ceramicists.
"My foster dad and my grandmother were potters, that's where I learnt my skill from," Ms Kasirye said.
By selling her pottery creations and teaching the art of ceramics out of her home in Cairns, Ms Kasirye is able to pay for the education of Ugandan children who live in her home village of Kalapata, a remote community in north-east Uganda.
Ms Kasirye said education was a life-altering opportunity for the students, who otherwise, would have very limited opportunities in life.
Being given away by her mother as a young child, Ms Kasirye was adopted by a couple who were able to afford to give her an education and send her on a scholarship to Australia to study.
"My foster parents always ensured that I visited my mum in the village and from a very young age I recognised I was very lucky to have been adopted because a lot of the girls in the village were married off at a very young age," she said.
Ms Kasirye has lived in Australia for more than 30 years, but she constantly reminds herself of how different her life could have been without education.
"After being in Australia for 10 years I realised how lucky I was, so I thought I had to do something to help these girls," she said.
"Without education, these children would have no future."
According to UNICEF, teenage pregnancy is one of the main contributors to school dropout and a top cause of death among adolescent girls in Uganda. One in four girls aged 15 to 19 years have children.
There are also challenges with the quality of education: only about 50 per cent of primary school children are proficient in literacy and numeracy, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the Ugandan government.
Since forming Kalapata Children's Charity Institution, Ms Kasirye has raised thousands of dollars to put several children through primary and secondary school, but has also supported some children to complete tertiary study and go on to get jobs.
"I have had three girls who have graduated from tertiary study so far. One is a lawyer, [another is] a hairdresser and [the third] a fashion designer," Ms Kasirye said.
