February 2021

INTERVIEW WITH GIDEON MUHANGUZI ABOUT WORK IN RWAKOBO VILLAGE

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Today we welcome Gideon, Director of Hopeland and Wells of Hope Schools, and our liaison to Rwakobo Village. I’ve known Gideon for about ten years when he was a teacher/tutor at Father’s House in Kampala. We’ve been working together on the schools since May 2019, when my bakery began a Pound for Pound program to provide food for Hopeland School and the Arise Africa Babies Home. I’m so glad to have a chance to chat with him about Rwakobo Village!

J: When and how did the village at Rwakobo come to your attention?

G: We visited it in 2018 when our church [Celebration Tabernacle Church in Mbarara] was doing outreaches to the poorest and most needy areas in our region.

J. What was the first thing Celebration Tabernacle did in the village?

G: Together, the church fed the hungry, built a few mud houses with iron sheets for those who slept in grass huts or were basically homeless, and talked to the parents about the dangers of forced child marriages and other associated vices.

J: How many people live in Rwakobo Village?

G: Almost 3,000 now!

J: What is life like for those living there?

G: They live hand to mouth, well below the poverty line [so below $2 per day]. They hardly have any clean water, getting food is a struggle, and they have no health facilities so they depend on herbs for the treatment of illnesses.

J: What impact has the school made on the lives of the villagers?

G: They have seen the importance of education! Forced early marriages have been reduced, as well as the behaviors associated with that [like abuse, early pregnancy and related complications]. The value of girls has been resurrected!

J: How will the new school building and the reopening of the school after the Covid lockdown affect the children who attend Wells of Hope?

G: Their lives were being threatened over the last year! Not only were schools closed, but churches were also closed so they began to lose hope. They fell back in their educational achievements [school had only just started its third-ever term], and were giving up! The news of the opening will be amazing to them!

J: What impact did the Covid lockdowns and the loss of the full school year have on the children. What negative effects did you see during the last year, and what negative impacts do you anticipate because of the “lost year?”

G: Some children were starving and malnourished. Some were abandoned by their parents in their houses and left alone. Others were forced into early marriage, early pregnancy, and some girls were exchanged for food. The girls who were forced into marriage will not be able to return to school [Wells of Hope only goes to Primary 6]. We also anticipate that the little tuition some parents were able to pay will be reduced, as the parents have lost what incomes they had during the pandemic. Additionally, the families had to eat any seeds that they were saving for planting after the rainy season, so there is little income on the horizon.

J: What difference would having access to clean water, as well as good sanitation and hygiene, have on the school and village?

G: If the village didn’t have to rely on seasonal wells [ponds] and had clean water, the incidence of disease and illness would be greatly reduced! Waterborne illness is one of the biggest problems in the village and the school and accounts for many lost days of class. Diarrhea kills many children in the village. Handwashing stations and clean pit latrines would also help a lot!

J: What is the greatest need in Rwakobo Village?

G: A bigger school so all the children can attend, and funds to pay the staff. Clean water and water easily available for washing. And improved homes for the families who live in grass huts or mud homes.

J: Thank you so much for all your work in this village — and for introducing us to it last year! We can’t wait to get back there as soon as Covid allows!

INTERVIEW WITH GIDEON MUHANGUZI ABOUT WORK IN RWAKOBO VILLAGE Read More »

HOW DOES 100% OF YOUR DONATION GO TO THE PROGRAM?

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Since we started in 2008, we have used 100% of our donors’ money for the programs.

YES, 100%!

Surprisingly, people have argued with me (at length) as to why and how that can’t be true, even while our books and statements clearly show it is. So I thought I’d explain how it can be so.

  • I work from home.
  • We have no paid staff in the US.
  • We do not pay for ads on social media, unless someone donates specifically for them.
  • When I travel to Uganda, we personally donate to cover those expenses (flight, transportation, accommodations, food).
  • We receive in-kind donations that cover our website, accounting and donation software, and business cards.
  • We use an app called SendWave that lets us use mobile money on MTN and Airtel phones in Uganda to send money without any fees on our end. (There is a small tax on their end, which we figure in.)
  • Our donation platform lets donors choose to pay the fees for their card processing.

BUT WHY AREN’T YOU PAID?

I started this as a labor of love, and, to be honest, until 2020, it was a part time (sometimes VERY part time) job. When I’m in Uganda, which was twice a year until we moved to Nicaragua in 2016, it’s 70-80 hour weeks of working, but at most that’s 5-6 weeks a year. Even when I restarted in 2019, the work was less than 4 hours a month.

AND THEN COVID…

When we visited last January, I did feel strongly that we had the groundwork in place to grow. In February, I started getting Ten Eighteen ready to apply for grants. And then Covid arrived on the scene, and all the best planning went out the window. Grants pivoted to all things covid. Uganda locked down in a draconian way, and people began to starve.

So all the “formal” stuff went out the window, and we worked many many hours a week, just trying to keep people alive, provide meals, solicit donations, explain what was happening, and keep going by faith. The aftermath of the lockdowns, school closures, destroyed businesses, and starvation took months to fully realize and to begin to sketch out a way forward.

MEANWHILE, ALL OF YOU STEPPED UP WITH DONATIONS EVEN WHILE YOUR LIVES WERE IMPACTED SO GREATLY!

WE ARE GREATLY BLESSED…

One day, and thanks to (we pray) grants, we do hope to pay people — that will mean that the work has grown to the point that our impact in Uganda is where we envision it. But our belief is that YOUR hard earned money should go to the programs that you believe in. To the work, to feed children in devastatingly poor schools, for vocational training to teens in the slums who have nowhere else to go, to the teen moms at the Ross House, to clean water for Rwakobo.

I am blessed – we are blessed – that life in the US, while difficult over this last year, has let us offer our skills and work as volunteers. I’ve been to Uganda 13 times — we’ve been 29 times as a team — and we understand how great the needs are there and how far even a small amount of money can go.

NO ONE CAN DO EVERYTHING, BUT EVERYONE CAN DO SOMETHING.

HOW DOES 100% OF YOUR DONATION GO TO THE PROGRAM? Read More »

BEAUTY AND DESPERATION IN RWAKOBO VILLAGE

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The road through Lake Mburo National Park to Rwakobo Village

The village at Rwakobo Rock, which we call Rwakobo Village but which doesn’t seem to have a formal name, is about 10km inside Lake Mburo National Park. It was founded as a place to relocate Rwandan refugees, and (apparently) forgotten. While there is another village inside that park that seems to have services, a decent (for a Ugandan village) road, and houses the employees of the various safari lodges, Rwakobo Village is spread out and isolated — by geography, and by culture.

Their isolation has led to an extremely high rate of HIV/AIDS and STDs. Syphilis, in particular, seems to be rampant and largely untreated. No hospice or other medical outreach serves the village. Water-borne diseases such as typhoid, as well as malaria and illnesses related to poor hygiene, are leading causes of sickness and death.

WHAT IS A WASH CAMPAIGN?

WASH = Water Access, Sanitation, and Hygiene

WATER IS THE FIRST URGENT NEED

But at the same time, Wells of Hope School and Celebration Tabernacle Church outreach are teaching best hygiene practices. Since almost half of people in Rwakobo Village practice open defecation (going to the bathroom outside), there is a great need for education and construction of safe pit latrines for the villagers as well. All of these things are interconnected and vital for health and safety of those living in this village.

Inside a round house in Rwakobo Village

THIS TYPE OF CAMPAIGN IS A MARATHON NOT A SPRINT!

We have been working in Uganda since 2009, and are committed to this project for the long haul. Just before the school closings and lockdown last year, Ten Eighteen Uganda built a kitchen and a small cistern — sufficient for daily use — at Wells of Hope School. Thanks to a generous donor, we now have the funds to install a 7,000 liter eco-brick tank at the new school building. Since Equal Aqua Uganda will be traveling several hundred kilometers from their usual area, we are hoping to raise money for at least one 10,000 liter tank for the village to be built at the same time.

But what are the long term goals in this WASH Campaign?

  1. At least 12 ten-thousand gallon tanks spread throughout the village, to catch rainwater that can be used for washing, cooking, and drinking (with purification techniques such as boiling).
  2. One deep-water well installed by the end of 2022, and four by the end of 2025.
  3. Conduct a village-wide hygiene campaign in 2021 in collaboration with Celebration Tabernacle Church and Wells of Hope School, to teach the importance of using best hygiene practices such as frequent handwashing, especially after defecation.
  4. Construct pit latrines in the community in collaboration with Celebration Tabernacle Church.

If you’d like to donate to our Clean Water for Rwakobo campaign, we’d love to have you partner with us to effect meaningful and lasting change in this devastatingly poor community. 100% of your donations go to the project! And we’d love your thoughts, comments, and prayers as we tackle this job — we can’t do it, but God can accomplish it!

BEAUTY AND DESPERATION IN RWAKOBO VILLAGE Read More »

FEBRUARY IS WATER MONTH!

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Turn on the tap. What happens?

Clean water comes pouring out, ready for drinking, washing your hands, filling a pot, doing the laundry.

We really don’t even think about it.

But for the villagers in Rwakobo, there is no tap. There are no pipes. No wells. No clean water.

This is a “seasonal well.” It, and the others used by the 2,700 villagers, are natural or man-made depressions in the ground, filled by rainwater. Trenches dug in red dirt send more water into the stagnant pond.

Animals that live inside the Lake Mburo National Park use these “wells” (shallow ponds) also. They drink from them, cool off in them, use them to sneak up on prey. They defecate in and around them, and along the trenches where the rainwater flows.

The wells aren’t even very close to the village, meaning that they walk — mostly children — a mile or more to fill one or two jerry cans with filthy water, then return to their homes. The water is used for everything we use water for: cooking, washing clothes, sponge bathing, drinking.

t’s no wonder that water and feces born diseases that cause diarrhea are rampant.

DIARRHEA IS THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH OF CHILDREN UNDER 5 IN UGANDA…

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO HELP?

While our ultimate goal is to be able to have deep water wells to serve the village, our first step is to install Eco-Brick tanks. We have been able to secure funds for a 7,000 liter tank for the Wells of Hope School (thanks to a generous donation!), which will allow the children to have clean water for washing and cooking, and drinking with purification techniques. The children are being taught basic hygiene at the same time, so that hand washing with soap becomes second nature.

WE WANT TO FUND AT LEAST ONE 10,000 LITER TANK FOR THE VILLAGE IN FEBRUARY!

We are partnering with Equal Aqua Uganda, a UK/UG partnership, to build these tanks. Equal Aqua has been working in Eastern Uganda since its founding last year, but have agreed to travel to Rwakobo Village for this project. We would love to take advantage of this by installing more than one tank!

Eco-bricks are made by recycling plastic drink bottles, packing them with sand, and re-capping them to form a solid brick. They are then cemented into the structure, creating a stable tank to hold much more water than a cement-only tank would hold. The tank is filled with rainwater from the roof, a top keeps the tank clean, and a spigot at the bottom allows for the water to be drawn off and used.

A 7,000 LITER TANK COSTS $735, AND A 10,000 LITER TANK COSTS $1150

WE CAN DO IT! With your help, we can raise the money to kick off the WASH project in Rwakobo Village.

WASH = WATER ACCESS, SANITATION, & HYGIENE

We can save lives, and IMPROVE the lives of these extremely impoverished people.

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FEBRUARY IS WATER MONTH! Read More »