We are quite excited that the floors in the classrooms of our two classroom blocks at the Cubu school were finally finished this past July 2013! The two classroom blocks at the Cubu school were completed in July and August of 2012, and excited teachers and students moved into the buildings and began using them immediately. However, the final interior finish work could not be completed before rainy season began that year. Here’s a photo of the work in process in late June. During this time, the classes had to meet outside under the trees.
Besides finishing these two existing classroom blocks, the community has continued to gather the remaining needed materials which are needed before construction can begin on a third classroom block for Nursery children. We are still completing our fundraising for this block and hope that the needed funds will be raised by year-end so that construction can begin during the dry season at the beginning of 2014.
Celebrate the International Day of the Girl–Innovating for Education
Today, October 11th is the International Day of the Girl Child. In a world where 1 in 4 girls are born into poverty (World Bank) and 66 million girls are out of school (UNESCO), let’s take a moment to stop and think. What can be done to help underprivileged girls find their way in the world? I think the answer lies in this year’s theme for International Day of the Girl Child: Innovate for Girls’ Education.
Outreach Uganda is doing just that with its Girls’ Education Initiative which focuses on keeping girls in fourth to sixth grade in school. This program which started in 2011, now has over 30 girls participating in it. The program involves the girls, their parents and their entire northern Uganda village. In 2011, 19 girls started in this program. Within the first year, we were sad to learn that Cavine one of the older and brighter sixth grade girls in the program was pregnant. But after seeing her peers progress to secondary school with Outreach Uganda’s help, she realized that she wanted that for herself also.We are happy to report that in 2013, after several meetings with both Cavine and her parents, Cavine is back in school! Her parents are watching her baby girl while Cavine attends a boarding school to continue her studies. She hopes to be a nurse one day. Her parents are also excited for their child. Before the Girls’ Education Initiatve, most girls in the village did not go to secondary school. Instead they got married simply because parents had no money for their school fees and in the words of the village elders and their mothers, “there was nothing else for them to do”.
In 2014, we are planning on expanding this successful program to the entire parish (five additional villages). Please help Innovate Girls’ Education with us: donate now or sponsor and older girl in school!You can change the world today.
Tribute to Our Ugandan Mothers in Agwata
We weren’t in Uganda on Mother’s Day this year. But after our June visit, we felt compelled to recognize the wonderful Ugandan mothers in our Agwata women’s group, who on a daily basis make courageous decisions for the betterment of their children’s lives, and who endure unbelievable hardships so that their children might survive, eat and go to school. We offer prayers, encouragement and training to these mothers in hopes that they will serve as good role models for their children, all this despite having grown up for the most part in IDP camps themselves with no good role models to follow or normal cultural norms to fall back on during their formative years.
You realize that these women have hopes and dreams for the future success of their children just like we do here in the U.S. They were so excited to get their photos taken with their children. Most of them have not had their photos taken before!
Cubu Health Care Unit Opens Doors June 13
Outreach Uganda in partnership with the Agwata community opened a local health care clinic June 13. Outreach Uganda was fortunate to have the volunteer assistance of Sacha, a registered nurse from Canada who spent over two weeks in Agwata helping oversee the opening of the clinic. Sacha had worked in Tanzania for nine months with the Canadian equivalent of the Peace Corps and so was quite used to rural health conditions in a developing country like Uganda.
During the first three weeks of operation, the clinic served over 300 patients. The clinic serves the entire parish in which Agwata is located. Besides Agwata, there are five other villages in the parish with over 3,300 people in total. Like most areas of Uganda, over half of this population consists of children under the age of 15. Before this clinic opened, patients had to walk over 17 kilometers to the next closest clinic which might not even have the needed medicines. During rainy season, the journey can be especially treacherous as roads and paths become so muddy they become almost impassable.
The clinic began operations with three full-time staff including a registered nurse, and a nursing assistant. An in-charge nurse from the sub-county provides additional supervision. With time, the clinic hopes to expand its services to maternity services, and assistance to HIV/AIDS patients.
Outreach Uganda is currently seeking sponsors who would be willing to assist in providing a high level nurse, called a nurse/midwife at this clinic. We are also in the process of forming a clinic advisory committee which would be once per quarter via skype to help offer input and advice to help the clinic run smoothly. Please contact Carol at carol@outreachuganda.org if you would like to be a “nurse sponsor” or to be on the clinic advisory committee.
Ugandan Women Harvest Tasty Honey
Our Agwata beaders harvested their second crop of honey in late March. They have an apiary area in the bush not too far from the road which they started in mid-2011 with a special grant from a U.S. church.
Northern Ugandan honey is especially prized by customers because of its good taste influenced by the bees obtaining nectar from the plentiful shea trees in the north. Our industrious Agwata women prepared a second apiary during 2012. They hope to install additional hives by mid-2013. Below, they are showing two U.S. volunteers one of their top bar hives which they named after previous U.S. volunteers. The 2nd photo shows the group walking along a footpath through the bush to reach the beekeeping area.
Agwata Women Tackle Issues of Shelter, Violence and Drinking
Our Agwata group is divided into 5 clusters of about 18 women each. Because their huts are widely scattered throughout the village area which spreads to over 6 km from one side to the other, the women have grouped themselves into clusters based on their geographic location. We have spent much time with the women talking about how they need to both take charge of their lives and move forward, but also how they need to look out and care for each other as a group, and to encourage one another when they face difficulties.
In August, the Agwata women leaders directed each cluster to visit all members’ huts and determine the status of their households and living conditions, and pinpoint issues their members were facing. Each cluster presented their verbal reports when we visited them at the end of January. These reports sparked much discussion within the group.
They identified that the women had made much progress in building adequate shelters and expanding their compounds. They noted that especially elderly widows in the village were struggling and facing difficulties if there were no immediate family members to assist them. Physical violence was noted in some households but it had declined from previous years. They noted that it often seemed to be related to drinking by household members. Drinking also caused a reduction in work, and diverted the household’s meager resources toward buying alcohol. Only a very few members did not have adequate huts to live in. The clusters wrestled with ideas on how they might help those who were facing difficulties.
As a continuation of trying to help the group be responsible for themselves and show good leadership, each cluster was charged with the task of determining who would receive some knitted shawls that had been donated by the U.S. nonprofit, Women-4-Women Knitting for Peace. Each cluster had enough shawls for only 50% of their members. We were encouraged by what we saw. The clusters discussed with each other and seemed in the end to give priority to the elderly women and pregnant women. Here are some photos of the meetings and of the shawl distribution.
Peace Begins with You
“Building Character” is the focus of Outreah Uganda’s 2012 training efforts with all three of our Ugandan women’s groups (over 200 members), with our 160+ sponsored children and with our 300 students at the Agwata primary school in northern Uganda. The theme book for these Character Building Training efforts is entitled, “Peace Begins with You” by Katherine Scholes. The book contains wonderful illustrations and approaches the concept of peace from many angles.
And in the end, the book concludes that peace begins with the individual in their own backyard. After a day’s training with our Agwata beaders on character building, and talking about how ultimately building good character can help bring peace in your world, we asked the question, “how peaceful is your household?” The women were asked to line up along a 100 foot wide length imaginary line from hut to hut with “0” peace being at one end of the line and “10” total peace at the other end. This is what the line looked like:
Over 50% of the beaders were concentrated at the “0” to “2” area (left side) of the line while fewer than 20% were in the “5” to “10” section. The photo ends on the right side at about position 8 with only 1 to 2 beaders further to the right and missing from the photo.
Later, when asked why they were standing in the areas denoting the least “peace” many of the beaders explained that it was not necessarily that there was physical violence in their households (our monitoring had indicated this had decreased markedly in the past 1 1/2 years), but that it was more that there was the stress of not enough resources in their households whether it be food, money, clothing, medicines etc.
And that’s a good reminder again of what it means to be poor: a lack of all kinds of resources.
Peace begins with you.
Please join us in bringing more peace and more resources into our beaders’ lives in ways that are truly affirming, empowering and sustainable. It’s never easy. It’s never totally clear, and it always takes longer than just giving handouts. Read about our Agwata beaders’ hopes for happiness and peace.
Peace Pals for Uganda knitted by local church youth
Just a few days to go until the first group of volunteers leave for Uganda. We’ve recently received a wonderful care package of over 25 knitted “Peace Pal” dolls from a nearby group of elementary age church children. These avid knitters invested much time in making the dolls with the help of knitters from a nearby Lutheran Church. We know our new Nursery students at the Agwata school will love these dolls! Many thanks!
Oxen Training Begins in Agwata
Our Agwata beaders’ group began training its five oxen teams in early May this year. Each of their five work clusters received a donation of an ox team and plow from a supporting church in Massachusetts. Each cluster of about 18 women each plan to plow additional acreage on which to grow more cash crops to sustain themselves and their families.
Ox teams will be very useful because the clusters have many acres of land that can be plowed. This land has not been tilled during the preceding 20 years due to the internal war with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that ended in late 2006. Now, the women are faced with fertile land which has been overgrown with many trees, shrubs and other undergrowth which must be cleared away. Each cluster also identified an older youth from their cluster that could help train the oxen, and who could eventually also help them in the garden. The photos show the first day of training for the oxen.
From the time they came out of the satellite IDP camps in mid-2009, they were very food deprived. They spent the next year and a half clearing land by hand hoeing just so they could grow enough food for their families. Approximately 3 to 4 acres per family was needed for this. But now they are excited to begin the process of earning income for themselves and their families by growing cash crops such as sim sim (sesame seeds), grounds nuts (similar to peanuts), beans, onions and more.