Hope & Hopelessness In Uganda

Causes of poverty in Uganda:

“Free” education that isn’t really free

High cost of low education

Not enough jobs that pay for the skills the ones are able to attain

Not enough trade schools which would be more advantageous than secondary schools

Scraping and gardening to educate kids when they still come out of schools illiterate

If it’s a choice of sending daughter or son to school it will be the son. But most times it is the women and girls who are expected to bring income

Girls married off before the age of 18 - many before 16. Dropping out of school because of lack of sanitary supplies for their periods and/or marrying, selling their bodies to buy pads and stay in school.

Corruption and joblessness.

There are young people that have vision and are trying to move forward with their dreams and these are the ones to be role models to the younger ones to lift them up. But it will be a long process.

Our organization works to:

Supply water wells for clean water to prevent death and disease. We have installed 12 in the past six years.

Support schools by building classrooms, enabling them to pay good teachers. We support one that now is able to educate and care for more than four hundred children.

Support orphans. We are currently supporting 26 orphans in school and have had three young women graduate from college with degrees in Social work, Midwivery and Tailoring who have now come back to be mentors in their rural community.

Provide school girls with washable sanitary pad kits, education about their growing bodies, health and self defense. We also provide income to seamstresses that sew the kits and teach girls to make their own.

Provide sterile birthing kits and education to decrease mortality rates for mothers and babies. And the washable pads for after birth. We have been able to supply over 300 kits in the past two years.

Care of widows by welfare check-ups, solar lights, food and repairs of their homes.

I read a quote that says “Helping one person may not change the world but it could change the world for one person.”

It isn’t easy, it is heartbreaking to see children dying from preventable diseases, seeing the hopelessness and having to wade through real needs and those who just want handouts but we are encouraged when we see the few we help giving back to their peers and being examples to aspire to in their own communities

There is hope for their futures but in a country with such a violent past, joblessness and full of corruption it is going to take generations being taught integrity and character and courage to stand alone at times to bring about change.

-I juxtaposed the b/w photos of hopelessness against the color of joy.