July is a busy month for Outreach Uganda volunteers. Earlier in July, U.S. volunteers were busy organizing and packing supplies for the upcoming Uganda trip.
Thank you to all are U. S. Donors who donated money and supplies for this summer’s trip! We packed 200 reusable sanitary pad kits for girls, received donations of large suitcases, over 200 pairs of girls’ underwear, and dozens of ziplock bags to include in the kits.
In addition, we received several laptops, over 30 raincoats for girls boarding at the school and many much needed school supplies, especially pens and pencils.
Carol and Two Volunteers Safely Arrive in Uganda
Our volunteers in Uganda are hard at work in the community and seeing firsthand the tremendous growth in the Agwata community especially at the primary school and clinic.
Living in the community while volunteering lets volunteers see what rural Uganda village life is like. It helps you understand where your sponsored child lives and what they mean when they say they are washing utensils or fetching water.
Besides meeting our women’s group members, visiting sponsored children, and distributing sanitary pad kits, volunteer Mary has been teaching at the pre-school which has 210 students.
Interested in volunteering with us in Uganda in 2024? We expect our 2024 trips to be in Feb/March 2024 and July/early August 2024. Please contact us if you would like more information!
19. Invested your time in signing up for the King Soopers or Amazon Smile or your company’s matching donation program.
20 Finally, you donated over 10 large suitcases. These suitcases hauled the books, supplies and sanitary pad kits to Uganda
As a result of your continued, generous, donations of your time, talents and resources, you help keep Outreach Uganda’s overhead low. This means that over 95% of cash donations received can go directly towards program expenses. This sets Outreach Uganda apart from many nonprofits where a much lower percentage of funds ends up being available for program expenses.
In summary, all we can say is THANK YOU for a great job well done!
What Do Uganda Volunteers Do?
Volunteers Engage in Many Uganda Volunteer Activities
Outreach Uganda welcomes others to join us on our semi-annual volunteering trips to Uganda. Usually, each trip has a special focus. Sometimes the focus depends on what is going on in Uganda. Other times, it is based on things that we need done. Sometimes, it is centered around skills or resources that volunteers bring with them. No matter what, the kinds of Uganda volunteer activities are varied. They help us partner with our clients in Uganda.
Our July 2019 trip Uganda volunteer activities centered on the new school library building. Builders completed the school library right before we arrived! Our volunteer, Kirsten, is an experienced elementary teacher who was the librarian at her school this past year. She helped Lucy, the newly hired librarian for two weeks. The two worked diligently to organize the library. Next, they trained the teachers on how they could use the library to help their students learn.
How Uganda Volunteers Help in Uganda
Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to have many varied volunteers. We look forward to future volunteers and their sharing of even more skills, hobbies, and ideas that can help change lives. Past Uganda volunteer activities include:
Location :Agwata volunteering in northern Uganda
teach English to women, students, teachers
update sponsored children’s photos and stories
build the Head Teacher’s Hut
helped start the community clinic
organize the school library and its books
teach math and other class subjects at the school
share nursery teaching ideas with our nursery teachers
make earthen bricks with the Agwata community
analyze agriculture efforts and helped men start kitchen gardens
photograph and video our programs and life in Uganda
Location: Jinja volunteering in southeast Uganda
introduce new craft ideas to women
teach women business skills in person and online
provide sewing training to women
help women learn silk scarf tie dying and hand painting
conduct classes in English and numeracy for women and children
teach women the importance of colors and matching colors in their artisan work
Please email us at: office@outreachuganda.org. Or give us a call at 303/6838-8450 if you’d like more information about volunteering in 2020!
See past volunteers at work in Uganda in these photos:
Summer Volunteers Excited About Upcoming Uganda Trip
July 4th will be an exciting day for us at Outreach Uganda. Three volunteers will be embarking on a fun and rewarding adventure volunteering in Uganda for 3 weeks with Carol Davis, Outreach Uganda’s founder and president.
Carmen McDermott is a retired elementary school teacher, Nancy Sullivan a consultant, and Deb Morgans a preschool director. All are from the Denver metro area and are passionate about inspiring the children at the Agwata school, and the Ugandan women who bead and make fair trade crafts. They realize the Uganda community will be an inspiration to the three of them as well.
Deb has been helping OU over the last few years with the preschool in Uganda. She has sponsored a girl at the Agwata primary school for the past 5 years. This girl is now 8 years old. Deb shares the progress with her own preschool students. She’s looking forward to sharing her photos and experiences about the trip with them as well. She plans on working with the four Ugandan preschool teachers to help them further their success as educators. Deb explains, “I’ve wanted to serve as a volunteer in Africa since I was 17 years old.”
Nancy Sullivan has been a strong OU supporter for many years, especially through their successful sponsorship and education programs. She’s recently joined OU’s Board of Directors and wants to see first-hand what OU has accomplished this past 10 years working with the Ugandan women and children. During her stay, she plans on updating student profiles, and working with both students and teachers on improving their English speaking skills. This is very important because English is the official business language in Uganda. From 7th grade onward, all classes and exams are in English.
Carmen has been following the work that OU has accomplished with the women and children. She became so impressed with their success that when she learned about the project starting a school. She wanted to learn more about how to become involved. While she’s in Uganda this summer, she will be sharing her expertise and insights. She will help the school with classroom management, hands-on techniques of teaching math concepts, and building a collaborative relationship with the teachers.
Volunteering in Uganda Yields Many Benefits
Volunteering in Uganda helps our donors see for themselves how their dollars are helping students learn and the community to flourish. Sponsors will be able to visit their sponsored child and his/her family. Volunteers often become more enthusiastic and want to become more involved. They share with others how their donations touch and change lives.
Our volunteers are enthusiastic about being an onsite resource to impart their skills and expertise in a meaningful and personal way. We know their enthusiasm will ignite enthusiasm in others and make an impact
Uganda Volunteers Needed for 2019 Trips
Pleasecontact usif you’d interested in learning more about volunteering in Uganda during our Feb/March or summer 2019 trips. We welcome volunteers with all kinds of skills and passions. We will find a place for you on our volunteer team! For 2019, we are especially looking for volunteers with certain specialized skills. These include construction, engineering, and agricultural backgrounds as well as jewelry designers and product marketers.
Uganda Volunteer, Leah, Shares Her Experience
“Think no more. Go,” says Uganda volunteer Leah
This past summer we were fortunate to have several volunteers in Uganda. One of those was Leah who visited both our Agwata and Jinja locations in August. After completing a career in the military, Leah is now completing her master’s degree in public health. She was quite excited to visit our Agwata clinic to see first hand how much a remote community clinic such as Agwata’s can make such a positive impact.
Besides helping inventory a shipment of medicines from Outreach Uganda, she was amazed to note that on the day she observed clinic operations, 50 out of 50 patients tested positive for malaria!
Leah has been a dedicated sponsor, not only of one of the children at the Agwata school, but also of two of the nurse positions at the clinic. Leah was thrilled to be able to meet not only her sponsored child, but to meet her child’s entire family and visit their home.
Besides helping at the clinic, Leah also visited our fifth and sixth grade classes at the Agwata school to help them with their English. Leah commented, “When you deploy, you have a mission and purpose. But this [volunteering and sponsoring] is so much more special because you are directly impacting people.”
She hopes to travel back to Uganda again with us in February/March. “It’s just cool. You can’t go and not expect your life to be changed forever,” observed Leah. “Think no more. Go.”
U.S. Volunteers Help Construct Headmaster’s Hut
U.S. Volunteers Build Hut
During our May 2015 visit to Agwata, two U.S. volunteers traveled with us to help construct desperately needed housing for the school’s headmaster. The teachers eagerly greeted U.S. volunteers, Linda and Merry, who not only provided labor for assisting the local Uganda builder in building the hut, but who also helped provide funding to buy the materials needed for the hut construction.
In just four full action-packed days on site, Linda and Merry helped the builder complete the circular-shaped hut structure by cementing earthen bricks layer by layer until they reached the roofing level. Prior to their arrival, the builder had constructed the hut roof using layers of dried thatched grasses mounted on a pole structure.
Step by Step, U.S. Volunteers Learn to Lay Bricks
The head master’s wife and two children were also visiting so that they could watch their hut being built. The headmaster’s two sons, Jessa and Justice (ages 6 and 2), loved both watching and “helping” with the building process. Many tasks needed to be done:
grass and debris had to be cleared from the hut area
school children helped ferry the earthen bricks to the hut’s location, surrounding the hut with circles of bricks ready to use
the community had collected river sand which was moved by wheelbarrow or cart to the hut site so it could be mixed with water from the bore hole plus bags of cement mix to make the cement
daily, the builder made lunch for his crew on a small open fire inside the hut area
over twelve rows of bricks needed to be laid in a very specific pattern, making sure any excess cement was wiped away
once the bricks were laid, then the entire inside wall area needed to be plastered with more cement
the bare dirt floor area also needed to be smoothed and coated with cement
the outside wall also needed to be plastered and a cement and brick veranda apron needed to be made
the last step was to install a metal door and window to make sure the hut is secure
As the Agwata school continues to develop, more students are attending classes, and additional teachers are hired which causes more teacher huts to be needed! Two teachers whoShoveling river sand inwere living with families in the community, moved into the headmaster’s older, smaller hut after its leaky roof was repaired. In Uganda, it is customary for school’s to provide housing for its teachers. So, if you want to attract good teachers, you want to provide the best housing possible. In rural areas in the north, this is often mud and thatch huts. We made our headmaster’s hut extra special by using a layered thatch roof, and bricks with cement, rather than plain mud and sticks, for the walls.
Headmaster Thanks U.S. Volunteers for a Job Well Done!
Headmaster Opio was quite excited that work on the hut had progressed so rapidly during the week. At the conclusion, with only some outside plastering and installation of the door and window remaining, he calmly proclaimed that indeed, it was “Very nice!”
Nonprofit Volunteering: Have a Rewarding Experience with Us
Nonprofit Volunteering: Not Only Rewarding but Allows Donor Dollars to Do More!
Volunteers are our lifeblood. Not only do they help our organization accomplish its mission of empowering poor people in Uganda to overcome poverty, but a cadre of dedicated volunteers also means that every donor dollar we receive can be stretched much farther. With our founder’s, Carol Davis’s, background as a CPA working with nonprofit organizations, she has seen firsthand how important it is to keep overhead to a necessary minimum while channeling the most donor dollars possible to the program activities of highest importance. Whether you are highly technically oriented such as an attorney or health professional, or someone with less technical skills who wants to make sure important things get done and who are willing to do whatever might be needed, your nonprofit volunteering with us, will help make sure donor dollars are utilized as wisely as possible. And we hope you will find your nonprofit volunteering experience very rewarding!
Typical Questions People Have Before Their Nonprofit Volunteering with Us
Prior to their nonprofit volunteering, we find people have many questions. Please read on. We hope you’ll find some answers that will encourage you to volunteer today! Here are some of the more typical questions we hear:
How long do you need to volunteer? In Uganda, you should plan on spending at least seven days in-country. In the U.S., we hope you can make volunteering with us at least a one year commitment.
Is the schedule flexible? – It can be flexible although we like for you to commit to which days at least a week or two in advance so that we can depend and know what work to allocate to you.
How does virtual volunteering work? We will communicate via phone, email and/or skype re: the work that needs to be done and the timetable/deadlines related to that work. You will then independently work on the project with specific deliverables and check in times. It helps if you are a self-starter, focused and like to work independently.
I’m not sure what I can do. Can you help me find something to fit with your needs? We would love to talk with you more to find out about your skills, passions, and interests and then see together how that might fit with the kinds of needs and projects we currently have. Please contact Carol or Kate to talk more about it!
Will I get to meet your other volunteers? It depends! If you are working at our actual metro Denver location, then you will certainly get to meet other volunteers although each volunteer is on a different schedule. If you are a virtual volunteer, then you may be talking to a few other volunteers via phone, but will not be able to physically meet them unless you come to Denver! You’re always welcome to pay us a visit, and likewise, we would love to meet you in person if we happen to be traveling to your city. We try to schedule at least one volunteer social/recognition get together each year.
Is Nonprofit Volunteering in Uganda Scary?
Not so much. The war there ended in late 2006. So it is now quite safe. Uganda is actually one of the more popular African countries to travel to. Our largest women’s group is located in Jinja, Uganda which is the source of the Nile River and a very popular tourist destination (of course our women live in the slum areas of Jinja, not the tourist areas). Depending on how long you are in Uganda, it might be possible to schedule an extra day or two to visit one of Uganda’s largest game parks called Murchison Falls National Park. Next trips to Uganda are in May and July 2015, then Feb 2016.
A New Twist on our March Wish List: Volunteers. We Need You!
A New Twist on our March Wish List: Volunteers!
With luggage fees charged by the airlines rising rapidly from what they were a few years ago, we decided to highlight this month a new type of need. We need you! We are looking for people who can volunteer here in the U.S. whether it is virtually or at our office location in metro Denver, Colorado, and also volunteers from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. who are interested in volunteering on a short-term basis with us in Uganda.
March Wish List Needs: U.S. Volunteers and Uganda Volunteers
Virtual volunteers or those who can be located anywhere in the U.S./Canada are especially needed for writing curriculum materials for our Girls’ Education Initiative program, writing grants, sales rep for our craft marketing, online SEO work, bead party hosts and more! At our U.S. headquarters location in the metro Denver area, we are need volunteers for office help, legal help relative to contracts, photography, marketing strategist and an accountant/CPA.
If you are interesting in traveling to Uganda with us for at least seven days in country (10 to 20 days is even better!), we can use those who can teach English and numeracy, those with nursing, medical and health-related skills, agricultural trainers including organic gardeners, beekeepers, community planners, those with construction experience, pre-school and elementary teachers and much more.
We hope that those volunteering in Uganda might consider carrying an additional suitcase of much needed items which we collect from U.S. donors such as:
homemade sanitary pads,
vitamins which are not readily available in Uganda
certain school supplies such as pens and pencils which our primary school consumes quickly during the course of a school year
calculators and laptops which are especially needed by secondary and university students
March Biggest Volunteers Need: Teacher or Writer to Develop Curriculum for Girls’ Education Initiative Program
Are you, or someone you know, a teacher who likes to write curriculum materials? If so, we have the perfect volunteer job for you! We are in need of someone with such skills that has time available to formalize the curriculum materials for our Girls’ Education Initiative (GEI)program which currently has over 90 girls, ages 9 to 13 enrolled in it. We would like to break the group into two groups based on age, and have two teachers from the Cubu school help our GEI Coordinator teach the program. But we need to upgrade and formalize our curriculum materials to do this. We also have begun working with a second primary school in the sub-county, and they too would like to present this curriculum at their school.
Our GEI coordinator meets with the girls weekly for two to three hours. The training portion lasts about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. This program is supplemental to their education and covers topics such as study habits, goal-setting, making good choices, self-esteem, handling peer pressure, changes in adolescence, and choosing friends wisely. Email Carol if you would like to take on this very important project. Ideally, we would like someone to complete this project before the third school term begins on September 7th, 2015. Although, it could be spread over a longer period of time as long as some of the modules were finished by the September date.
Bead Events Mean Big Money for Our Beaders!
Our Ugandan Women Need Your Help to Increase Paper Bead Sales
October marks the start of our paper bead selling season when we help sell our Ugandan women’s paper bead jewelry and fair trade crafts at bead events not only in metro Denver but throughout the United States. In addition, we ship their Ugandan paper beads to interested volunteers who want to host a bead party or sell at their workplace, church, school and more.
We can’t do this without you! We need the help of interested volunteers throughout the U.S. who might be willing to spend a day at a local craft fair selling our Ugandan women’s fair trade craft products, or other volunteers who might want to host a more personalized bead party with their friends, family, co-workers or church members, showing them our women’s beautiful paper bead jewelry.
Buy Paper Bead Jewelry or Donate Online
Help our 200+ Ugandan women beaders (see Abong Lilly and her children below) earn more income through bead sales. Don’t have time this year to volunteer? Please consider making an online holiday gift purchase to buy paper bead jewelrynow. It truly does make a life changing difference in the lives of our beaders and especially their children. Some of our more popular shop items for the holidays include paper bead ornaments, wine glass charms (sets of 8), stuffed animals (giraffes, elephants and zebras) in colorful African cotton kitenge fabric, and our ever popular bracelets in many sizes and styles. Our cotton sling bags are popular gifts for high school and college students. They are also great as alternative shopping bags. Many of our products are in the $5 to $15 range making them ideal stocking stuffers, teacher gifts, and gifts for office co-workers.
If you are the person who has everything or who has already bought many products from us, please consider making a donation online. It truly can make a life changing difference in our beaders’ lives. We currently have three major projects underway and donations are especially needed to see these projects through to a successful completion: 1) our home ownership program for our Jinja women 2) expansion of our northern Uganda clinic to offer maternity services and 3) construction of our fourth classroom block at the Agwata school.
Abong Lilly, a very talented beader in our Jinja beader group makes micro beads, coin purses and paper and seed bead necklaces.
Volunteer at an event or host a bead party and help Abong earn income to support her family.
Volunteer at an event or host a bead party and help Abong earn income to support her family.
Same Business Day for Paper Bead Shipments During December
We know you are busy during December, and that timing is critical. During this month especially, we ship most orders on the same business day they are received. We receive weekly shipments of products from Uganda during this time, and maintain a large inventory at our metro Denver location which enables us to do this. If we see we cannot ship your order within 2 business days, we will notify you immediately. If you happen to live in the metro Denver area, you can call or email us and we will let you know where you can find our products in local stores or you are always welcome to visit our office showroom where our largest inventory of products is located.
Fair Trade Pricing for Paper Beads Means Happy Beaders!
We pay our beaders a better than fair trade price for their efforts. We are able to do this because most of our U.S. labor is volunteer. This means our beaders can earn a fair day’s wage for their work, work under good and safe conditions with no child labor involved, and also participate in beneficial training programs that we provide especially for them. This includes business training, leadership and management training, English and numeracy training, and personal development training.
Thank You to Our Volunteers Who Make a Difference
National Volunteer Week is April 6– 12, 2014.
National Volunteer Week celebrates ordinary people who take action and do amazing things to help improve their communities and the world. This one week highlights the enormous contributions that volunteers make every day. It is not just about random acts of kindness, but about making volunteering and giving back (or paying it forward) a part of your everyday life.
Outreach Uganda is thankful for its wonderful volunteers! Thank you to everyone who has helped us in oh so many ways this past year. In 2013, over 100 volunteers have helped us. Volunteers have hosted bead parties, staffed tables at bead events, helped in our office, helped with social media and marketing, held school supply drives, taught and developed curriculum materials, hosted fundraising events, sewed dresses, blankets and pads, used their skills to improve health and community outcomes in Uganda, served as board members, and more. Thank you! We could not fulfill our mission without your help every day!
Please email Carol if you would like to volunteer in some way or know of someone who might also like to help out whether here in the metro Denver area, virtually, or in Uganda.
The nonprofit, Independent Sector, has calculated that the national value of volunteer time is $22.55 per hour in 2013
Since our nation’s founding, volunteers have been the source of action and change. Two hundred and 35 years later, their energy continues to move our country forward. Volunteering is even simpler today because of the internet and advances in social networking and technology.
According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, about 64.5 million Americans, or 26.5 percent of the adult population, gave 7.9 billion hours of volunteer service worth $175 billion in 2012.