The girls are very happy and doing extremely well with school and in their studies (L to R) Claire, Veronica, Vivian, Nyangoma, Monica, Nalubombwe, Namata, Dena

I have already been working and living here in Uganda for a month and we are moving forward with many exciting projects with our community partners including Bishop Asili Hospital, School Committees at the Children’s Academy for the Collective Heart at Katikamu and St. Joseph School in Magogo (the newest school building project), the staff and patients of Bishop Asili Hospital, our wonderful sponsored children and their parents, and our adult education partners.

One major highlight during Vivian’s recent visit was our conversations with our scholarship students and their parents. During training, I was introduced to Monica Nyiraguhabwa, a young woman that Vivian met at the International Colloquium on Women’s Empowerment, Leadership, Development, International Peace and Security in Liberia. Monica currently works for an organization that mentors and trains young women on life skills and empowerment and has agreed to help us create a mentorship and empowerment training program for our sponsored students. This training is so important, as our students come from extremely vulnerable circumstances and can benefit from life skills coaching on topics such as knowing their rights and responsibilities, social survival skills, safety and security, health and hygiene and becoming leaders and role models to others in their community. Monica, along with her colleague Claire Tusingwire, who lives in the Luwero region, will conduct a weekend training course for the sponsored students during their winter school break. Monica and Claire came with us to the school to meet the girls.

Jenny Hamel interviews the girls at school

Monica and Claire provided mini-training during the visit and did an excellent job of interacting with the girls, we could see that they really responded and related to Claire and Monica as empowered young Ugandan women and positive role models

We visited William before he left for school, here with his mother Nankinga Grace, in their home. Nankinga Grace is a role model for other women and a community volunteer at Bishop Asili. William will also attend the Life Skills and Empowerment training over his winter break.

We also visited the guardians of three of the sponsored girls in their village of Kikoirro. The parents are so grateful for this opportunity for their children and shared their thoughts and opinions with us on the future of their girls. We will conduct a workshop on creating wills/planning for the future and legal rights/empowerment with the parents this fall.

Village children and community leader, Chatti, pose in front of the home of one of our scholarship students, Veronica. The people of the village of Kikoirro are extremely poor and vulnerable, making the opportunity for our scholarship girls that much more valuable.

A special thank you to the sponsors of our scholarship children who have made all of this possible as well as to Dr. Puja Shah, Jenny Hamel, Dr. David Smotrich and Lidia Domagalska for the recent visit and all of the wonderful contributions they made to the people here, more to follow on this and other projects in blogs in the coming weeks.