October 21, 2010

Dear Friends,

It’s been five weeks since we returned to Uganda and we have been busy.  Our students are now in the third and final school term of the year.  Seventy-five candidates in Primary 7, Senior 4, and Senior 6 are preparing for the national exams which are taking place from now through November.  It is the height of rainy season and the banana trees are bursting with fruit.  Here are some highlights from the past few weeks.

Volunteer Intern

It was our pleasure to welcome Danielle Spindle of Mentor, OH, who is spending the month of October interning with us.  Danielle recently graduated from Bowling Green State University with a BSN.  She’s been helping out at the office, going on home visits with our staff, and teaching songs to the children at the primary school.   She is also observing at the mission hospital which provides health care to our kids and many others in the surrounding neighborhood.

Parents Meeting

Danielle was the featured speaker at a meeting of our Parents and Guardians Association.  She spoke on health, hygiene, nutrition, and child safety.  A lively discussion followed which included questions about contagious and non-contagious diseases, and contraction and prevention of malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses.  The most important topic was HIV/AIDS: how it is transmitted and how it is not, how to prevent it, and the importance of getting tested.  In addition to input from our nurses, Sharon and Danielle, there was good advice from the Association’s president, Beatrice, and our own Field Associate, Agnes.

Visitation Day

This past Sunday, we traveled to St. Antonios Orthodox Secondary School to visit our 47 boarding students on Parents Visitation Day.  We left Kampala and rode for over an hour through the beautiful Ugandan countryside to the remote village of Monde.  We were met by more hugs than we could count from teens who miss us when we are away.  After the greetings, we moved into a classroom for a group meeting.  We reminded them of our expectations, both academic and behavioral.  We held an awards ceremony for the best performing students in 2nd term, complete with big praise and small gifts.  And we provided a mid-afternoon snack consisting of home-made samosas, hard-boiled eggs, sweet bananas, cookies, and sodas.  While Agnes and Danielle were distributing the mid-term supplies of sugar and soap, we met with the class teachers to review and discuss each child’s performance.

Sweater Distribution

Although we are on the equator, it gets chilly during the rainy season.  Each year at this time we provide new school sweaters to all of our primary school children.  It’s also a great opportunity to see each child, discuss their grades, and ask about their home situation.  These routine inquiries turned up a family about to lose their home, another family whose house was being flooded by the heavy rains, and two children who had been abandoned and were staying alone without any adult.  All of these issues are being successfully resolved.

As always, we are grateful for your support and your prayers.

Peter & Sharon

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What We Do

The St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund supports over 220 orphans and vulnerable children in primary and secondary school, and in vocational education & training.  We pay school fees and provide uniforms, shoes, socks, school supplies, daily lunch, and medical care.  With your help, we can make a real difference in their young lives.

Help Us Help the Children

We welcome donations of any amount.  You can also help by organizing a fund-raising event in your church, school, office, Sunday School, or organization on behalf of the children of Uganda.  Fliers and information sheets are available for downloading on the web site.

Receive our Print Newsletter

We send out a quarterly newsletter in which we provide in-depth stories of our children and their families.  If you would like to receive the newsletter, please reply to this email with your postal mailing address.

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Donations to help support our children can be sent to the St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund, P.O. Box 285, Chardon, OH   44024-0285, or you can donate on-line via PayPal.  To find out more about the Children’s Fund, visit www.ugandachildrensfund.org or contact us at info@ugandachildrensfund.org .

The St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund provides for the education, health, and welfare of Ugandan children, teens, and young adults.  We are a registered non-profit 501(c)(3) organization eligible to receive tax deductible contributions.

Find out more at www.ugandachildrensfund.org.

Just reflecting on our trip to Uganda in June 2010, looking over some of the photos and feeling like I want to get back there this year.  It’s a great expense and a great experience.  Here is a short look at our time there.

Revival isn’t finished if it’s not complete. At Favor of God, we want to see revival of the whole person and the whole community and country. If any area of life is transformed and the others are ignored, the impact will be minimal and the change will probably be a temporary experience. When God told Favor of God to “Turn the light on” to cause the darkness to flee, we believe he called us into the shallowest and deepest corners of life. That is why we feel free to minister to the many types of needs around us in church, government, community, medical, education, business and trade, and the family.

Find out more about Favor of God’s work in Northern Uganda at www.favorofgod.org.

Who we are

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.

Who we serve

We serve close to 100 million people in nearly 100 countries around the world. World Vision serves all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender.

Why we serve

Motivated by our faith in Jesus Christ, we serve alongside the poor and oppressed as a demonstration of God’s unconditional love for all people.

Reflecting Christ in each community

I’ll be honest – finding fair trade, organic, locally roasted Arabica coffee from Uganda that funds an incredibly good cause is about the most exciting thing that has happened to me all week.

Even more exciting? It’s $9.00 for a 12 oz bag.

WHEN DOES THIS EVER HAPPEN!?

I had to get to the bottom of it, so Joe Koenig of NGO “Three Avocados” and I had a little chat about coffee, Africa and what his organization is doing to put the two together to provide clean water for people in Uganda.

Turns out, too good is true -

(Click here to read the rest of the original blog post)

Before we continue on with the last few questions in our interview with Kamoga Hassan, watch the video he made to illustrate the need and the opportunity of working with children in Uganda through Visual Power and Redemption Ministries.

Leave your comments about Kamoga Hassan’s work below.  And now, back to our interview:

7) If you could have your dream come true, what would it be (personally)?

My dream is to help in anyway possible as I live to teach and train children how to learn the value of education.  Cameras are just one type of furthering your hopes and dreams.  The best way to succeed is hard work.  You can’t give up always move forward.  In my future I plan on getting my own editing suite for both video and audio, and film and edit all my videos and DVD’s.   I plan on my project to grow, to be very successful.  I want to reach as far to the stars as possible.  I know its hard work but I am able to have my dreams to come true.  God has already showed me this. I have a vision. I also want to start up country wide tours where policy markers and NGO can interact with children and know their problems.  In future I want also to work with different charity organizations to better the lives of children in Africa .

Challenges

Like I said in the very first beginning, our original idea was to empower the children by teaching them lifetime skills but the situation of dire need is now dragging us into paying school fees for young children who cannot join our audiovisual classes. Videography and photography being a new type of production to the children in Uganda , it requires a trainee to be of at least 15 years of age yet there are young children that Visual Power would cater for.

9) If your work/ministry had the best year ever, what would that look like?

My best work and project is to be “total success”, knowing i did the best job i could do for all involved in this accomplishments.

This is a continuation of our interview with Kamoga Hassan of Visual Power.

Name: Kamoga Hassan
Age: 23 years
Name of work: Visual Power

3) What does a typical day look like for you?

A typical day for me: I go around each day looking for subjects or media that  I can use my skills on filming current events. I take still shots of people, children; I ask how they feel about certain events or things that interest them; I involve the children as I go about my day, teaching them my skills if they want to know, I stop and show them what I am doing.  I love to teach them.  I stay very busy each day because so much needs to be done.  I travel and move around in and outside my city looking for anything that will be of interest for my people and myself.  I also learn from others as I do my work each day. Each day is a new day and a new beginning.

4) How do you feel about your work?

I feel that my work is to always help and benefit my community, the people, the country and that what I do is most important to teach others, what matters is that you can be poor or rich, you can still help to promote and instill into others the importance of love for your work and helping others to be educated and trained, that there is no better reward on earth than knowing you helped to educate and give love back to the community.  This creates the thought in people’s minds: it can be done, you can succeed.  I love my work field and I have learnt so much in the past years how camera and film can help others.  I cannot imagine doing anything else.

5) What do you wish people knew about your organization?
I want people to know the problems facing the underprivileged children and how they can help them by educating them/or teaching life time skills so that they can be self reliant and take charge of their nation. I also want other people in the society to see how lucky they are to be in those rich families and learn how to give back to the poor.  For example why should one person have food in the bin when there is a hungry child next door.

6) What do you wish people knew about you?
I want people to know that I am able and ready to help and share my skills in any society.  I am passionate about my work.  Its the life i have chosen for my future.  All that I have done was to educate myself and want others to know that I am a honest, caring person who fears God.  That’s what I have in my heart.  I want others to know that I care deeply and to show through my project its better to give than to receive.  I pray always that my work is of help to others in so many ways.

I encountered Kamoga Hassan on Facebook and saw through his profile that he was involved in multimedia and video production.  About the same time, I encountered Care Miller on Facebook who (as you can see from her activity on Facebook) is very passionate about serving in Uganda, and she told me of a film crew or production company that had made a film for her to promote opportunities for people to get involved in service projects in Uganda.  Not too much later, I saw the film that Kamoga Hassan posted on Facebook with Care Miller’s contact information in the credits, and I realized that they knew each other and he was the one that she had talked about.  As the Serve in Uganda idea and website continued to grow, I realized the best way to get information out was to let people talk for themselves, about their projects, about the ideas and communities for which they have passion.  I sent Kamoga Hassan a brief message on Facebook asking if he’d do an interview, and he responded with a lengthy interview and many, many photos.  It’s wonderful stuff!  And it’s going to be a three-part series so people can take it all in and really appreciate what Kamoga Hassan is up to in Uganda.  I would love if people would write in further questions for Kamoga Hassan and perhaps we can get a bit of a dialogue going around his work.  Write all questions and comments regarding Kamoga Hassan’s interview to info@serve-in-uganda.org and use the subject line “video and uganda.”   Without further ado, here is part 1 of our interview with Kamoga Hassan: Video and Uganda.

Name: Kamoga Hassan
Age: 23 years
Name of work: Visual Power

Brief introduction of Visual power

The original idea of “Visual power” was to teach basic camera operation skills, video editing, script writing, photography, Graphics designing, music, dance and drama amonger others. This was to benefit children those who lost their parents and those with very poor parents. By offering such skills to the children, it enables them to tell their own problems affecting them in their community. Skills such as videography and photography can be used more effectively to flesh out the core problem facing the children in their communities. The children are given the chance to produce shoot films, slide shows of still shoots within their communities.  This acts as an eye opener to the community to know the problems affecting the children and what should be done.  All these stories are told by the children through the camera lens and other skills such as music.  In future we plan to organize annual concerts throughout the country where children show the different skills that they have acquired.

Through this program, the policy makers, government heads, political leaders and NGOs will become conscious about problems facing the children and help to make the plan to solve the problems.

1) How long have you been involved there?

We have been involved in this movement since 2008 and I have also been volunteering with different organizations here in Uganda .

2) What does your work involve?

My work involves videography, photography, art and craft, I am a camera man, and I do video editing as well.  I do different projects, I travel to different communities, and travel to villages, in doing so I help others to be aware of the society and their needs. I also involve the children by teaching them as I travel on how to better their lives and by teaching them skills that are income-generating.

Let us know what you’re thinking.  Submit a comment or question below!  Stay tuned for part 2 and 3 of the interview, coming soon!

Last week I received a phone call from Peter who, with his wife, heads up the St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund in response to a query I had sent him through his website about getting more information about his organization to fill out this blog post.   He graciously agreed to an interview over the phone to highlight the work of his organization, but I bet he didn’t know that he would be so much of the focus on this blog post!  That phone call was one of the most enjoyable I’ve had in a long time as Peter is amazingly genuine and very enthusiastic about his work with the Uganda Children’s Fund.  It’s there in every detail of our conversation:

1) He retired from being a missionary to work on his project, the St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund, full-time.

2) Based in Ohio (family and grandchildren), he and his wife spend seven months out of the year in Kampala, developing relationships with the children and families they support through their fund.

3) He was a fountain of information for me about visiting Uganda (I will be going for the first time in June 2010) and his willingness to share is a wonderful commentary on his character and the organization for which he provides leadership.

Where passionate and compassionate people work, they will gather interested and motivated followers and supporters.   Peter, you have our full support.  I think everyone should read this page about the history of Peter’s organization:

When Sharon Georges returned to Uganda in January 2005, one of her goals was to follow up on two children she and her husband Peter had begun sponsoring in school during their first missionary tour in 2003. What started as a simple inquiry developed into a ministry that would grow beyond anything she could imagine. Fiona and Henry, siblings and orphans, were not the only children in need in that particular family. Their grandmother was caring for them and seven others in a deteriorating mud hut wedged between a major road and a swamp. There were more grandchildren living nearby, some with a single ailing parent, some with another relative. Within weeks, the two became thirteen. After Peter joined Sharon in Uganda, other situations presented themselves: a family of five kids living completely on their own, a little girl abandoned to a neighbor, children living with HIV-positive single parents, and many more.

Half the people of Uganda are under the age of fifteen and there are 2.5 million orphans in a total population of 31 million. When Uganda’s bloody civil war drew to a close in 1986 and the country started rebuilding, the AIDS pandemic hit with full force. The result of these two devastating blows, combined with pervasive malaria and poverty, is that a large percentage of the “middle adult” age group has been wiped out. Children are being cared for by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors, and some are completely on their own. Many young adults find themselves without parents—and without the wisdom, guidance, and safety net that parents normally provide.

Education is extremely important in Uganda. Parents, guardians, and children see education as their best way of escaping a lifetime of poverty—scraping by as subsistence farmers or unskilled labor, and often early marriage for teen-age girls. Although primary education is partially subsidized by the Ugandan government, no schooling is completely without cost. The place of education in the Ugandan family’s priorities is evident in the fact that hospital admissions regularly drop off during the three times a year when school fees are due. Parents choose to do without medical care in order to keep their children in school. Although fees and expenses are low compared to western standards, they are still beyond the reach of many Ugandans, especially for people who are caring for orphaned children of relatives and friends as well as their own.
As Sharon and Peter became more involved with the children’s education, they realized that there was more to it than school fees, uniforms, lunches, and books. As in the case of the grandmother’s orphans, miserable living conditions can seriously affect a child’s ability to learn as well as jeopardize their general health. So their assistance became more extensive—improved living quarters, shoes, clothing, beds, mattresses, sheets, blankets, mosquito nets, food staples and health care. Although the cash outflow was now exceeding their modest missionary stipend, they continued to proceed in faith. And as word of their efforts became known, people of good will began to ask how they could help. Thus was born the St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund.

Peter and Sharon resigned as missionaries in October, 2007, in order to devote themselves full-time to the work of the Children’s Fund.that Peter sent that gives much more detail about the ministry.

Download the entire info sheet here: Childrens Fund info sheet

You can also find out more at http://www.ugandachildrensfund.org

Last week I received a phone call from Peter who, with his wife, heads up the St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund in response to a query I had sent him through his website about getting more information about his organization to fill out this blog post.   He graciously agreed to an interview over the phone to highlight the work of his organization, but I bet he didn’t know that he would be so much of the focus on this blog post!  That phone call was one of the most enjoyable I’ve had in a long time as Peter is amazingly genuine and very enthusiastic about his work with the Uganda Children’s Fund.  It’s there in every detail of our conversation:

1) He retired from being a missionary to work on his project, the St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund, full-time.

2) Based in Ohio (family and grandchildren), he and his wife spend seven months out of the year in Kampala, developing relationships with the children and families they support through their fund.

3) He was a fountain of information for me about visiting Uganda (I will be going for the first time in June 2010) and his willingness to share is a wonderful commentary on his character and the organization for which he provides leadership.

Where passionate and compassionate people work, they will gather interested and motivated followers and supporters.   Peter, you have our full support.  I think everyone should read this page about the history of Peter’s organization:

When Sharon Georges returned to Uganda in January 2005, one of her goals was to follow up on two children she and her husband Peter had begun sponsoring in school during their first missionary tour in 2003. What started as a simple inquiry developed into a ministry that would grow beyond anything she could imagine. Fiona and Henry, siblings and orphans, were not the only children in need in that particular family. Their grandmother was caring for them and seven others in a deteriorating mud hut wedged between a major road and a swamp. There were more grandchildren living nearby, some with a single ailing parent, some with another relative. Within weeks, the two became thirteen. After Peter joined Sharon in Uganda, other situations presented themselves: a family of five kids living completely on their own, a little girl abandoned to a neighbor, children living with HIV-positive single parents, and many more.

Half the people of Uganda are under the age of fifteen and there are 2.5 million orphans in a total population of 31 million. When Uganda’s bloody civil war drew to a close in 1986 and the country started rebuilding, the AIDS pandemic hit with full force. The result of these two devastating blows, combined with pervasive malaria and poverty, is that a large percentage of the “middle adult” age group has been wiped out. Children are being cared for by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors, and some are completely on their own. Many young adults find themselves without parents—and without the wisdom, guidance, and safety net that parents normally provide.

Education is extremely important in Uganda. Parents, guardians, and children see education as their best way of escaping a lifetime of poverty—scraping by as subsistence farmers or unskilled labor, and often early marriage for teen-age girls. Although primary education is partially subsidized by the Ugandan government, no schooling is completely without cost. The place of education in the Ugandan family’s priorities is evident in the fact that hospital admissions regularly drop off during the three times a year when school fees are due. Parents choose to do without medical care in order to keep their children in school. Although fees and expenses are low compared to western standards, they are still beyond the reach of many Ugandans, especially for people who are caring for orphaned children of relatives and friends as well as their own.
As Sharon and Peter became more involved with the children’s education, they realized that there was more to it than school fees, uniforms, lunches, and books. As in the case of the grandmother’s orphans, miserable living conditions can seriously affect a child’s ability to learn as well as jeopardize their general health. So their assistance became more extensive—improved living quarters, shoes, clothing, beds, mattresses, sheets, blankets, mosquito nets, food staples and health care. Although the cash outflow was now exceeding their modest missionary stipend, they continued to proceed in faith. And as word of their efforts became known, people of good will began to ask how they could help. Thus was born the St. Nicholas Uganda Children’s Fund.

Peter and Sharon resigned as missionaries in October, 2007, in order to devote themselves full-time to the work of the Children’s Fund.that Peter sent that gives much more detail about the ministry.

Download the entire info sheet here: Childrens Fund info sheet

You can also find out more at http://www.ugandachildrensfund.org