UGANDA Trip 2008

Hello friends and family,

It's time to start blogging again!

David and I leave tomorrow, May 5, for a three-week trip to Uganda. Jeff Ireland will be going with us. I've posted some pics from last year's trip at the link below just because it's hard to download pics while we're there.

http://picasaweb.google.com/marleamjohnson

David just sent a report out to the folks who sponsor kids through the ISAC program (Initiative to Save African Children) that David has been working on since we got back last summer. I'm copying that report below. It's lengthy but I think it gives a good explanation for what's been going on and what we hope to accomplish in the future. I'll try to write every couple of days if I can and send pictures when I can. We're especially looking forward to seeing and staying with Irene Kimeze and the children. Also, our good buddies, Candice and Bobby Garner, have moved to Jinja and we'll be seeing them.

Oh, if you've got questions about any of this, comment here and I'll write you back or email me.

God bless all of you and thanks always for your prayers and support. God is good and faithful! Marlea

Report to ISAC sponsors and supporters of Ugandan development missions – Spring 2008

David and Marlea Johnson

As you may know, Marlea and I return to Uganda on May 5 to document some of our projects there, and to gather information that will help us chart the future of these and other development ministries. Our involvement took a leap forward this past year as we began to solicit sponsors like you for the Initiative to Save African Children (ISAC). ISAC was established in 2007 to minister to AIDS orphans in an impoverished area of southeastern Uganda.

Your annual sponsorship ($25 per month) covers the child’s school fees and supplies, a new school uniform each year, one hot meal per day on school days, and medical care as required. Sponsorship funds also provide for program administration in Uganda. It is important to note that 100% of the funds you contribute go to Uganda to support the ministry. Marlea and I handle the money and paperwork on this end as unpaid volunteers. The program is administered in Uganda by Ricky and Jackie Kahudu, long-time members of the Jinja church of Christ. Their work is overseen by Roy Mwesigwa, a trusted Christian leader in the region.

Ricky and Jackie are the primary administrators of the program. Through close work with the schools and with local churches, they identify needy children, document their family situation and physical condition, and assess their needs. They develop a personal relationship with each child and provide emotional and spiritual counsel to the children and their caretakers. Besides having a tremendous heart for these children, Ricky’s former position as a secondary school administrator suits him well for this ministry.

Here’s how we got started. During our visit to Uganda in June, 2007, Ricky approached me about his work among children in Mbiko community in Njeru, a town on the west bank of the Nile RiverMombasa, Kenya to Kampala and beyond. Positioned as such, it is a place where long haul truckers spend the night, and where prostitution—and HIV/AIDS—is rampant. near Jinja. Njeru lies on the main highway that runs from

I was impressed that Ricky was not sitting on his hands, waiting for someone with money to start his program. He had already spent a considerable amount of personal time and funds in planning ISAC and registering it with the local government. Ricky’s persistence and sincerity convinced me to look into the situation, to visit the community, the primary school where many of the children go, and even to visit the homes of eight or nine of the children. It was for me the most emotionally wrenching single day of our six-week stay in Uganda.

I had no intentions of getting involved in an orphan care or school fee sponsorship program. I want to be clear about my perspective and intentions with regard to these sponsorships. Stated briefly, it is this: My long-term goal is to have absolutely zero children in the program. That is, I intend to work toward the day when a program of sponsorships for basic necessities like education and medical care is irrelevant, because we will have implemented programs to enable the families who have taken in these children to earn the money needed to care for them.

Two years ago, I sat with Joseph (not his real name), a father of eight children whose family has taken in three orphans, children of relatives who died in middle age. It is a common refrain in sub-Saharan Africa—families with too many children burdened with even more who are orphaned due to AIDS-related deaths. I listened as he itemized each child’s school expenses, and then told him, “Joseph (not his real name), I am concerned about your children’s school fees, but I’m not in a position to provide scholarships. I want to help you make more money so you can pay your children’s school fees.” [1]

It’s a statement I’ve recited on a number of occasions, and one with which our Ugandan partners agree. No parents would choose to have their children’s wellbeing dependent on charity, which may be generous today and nonexistent tomorrow. Like you and me, they want the security and dignity of providing for their own needs, and to have their children grow up in homes with secure sources of income and hopeful about the future. If I want these things for myself, the Golden Rule compels me to want them for others.

For these reasons, we believe:

in development, not relief, as a remedy to underdevelopment;

in providing tools and training, not handouts;

on building competency and self-confidence, not dependency and inferiority; and

on regarding even “the least of these” as capable agents of their own futures, not victims whose problems can only be solved by outsiders.

This is our vision for all the families who’ve taken in orphans like the ones you’re sponsoring—to identify ways to assist them in moving to self-sufficiency. With some this may be possible fairly quickly; with others it will take some time; and for others it is simply not feasible. It’s not practical to tell an aged grandmother, for example—the sole caretaker of seven grandchildren—that we won’t help her immediately but will help her make more money so she can care for them. She may be able to feed them, but she can’t keep them in school; and without education, the cycle of ignorance and poverty will persist. In her case, we will seek to help her make more money, but we also want to help put the children in school. Even more, through special programs and life skills training, we will search for ways to help these children break free of poverty’s hold on them, while also taking care not to allow them to become trapped in dependency.

When we began considering how we might work with ISAC last fall, we knew we needed local accountability to ensure the program’s legitimacy. I believe there are four requirements for legitimate programs of assistance such as this.

We must show that there are:

1. genuine needs;
2. a program designed to address those needs both efficiently and effectively,
3. accountability to ensure that resources contributed to the program are properly used to accomplish the program’s purposes; and
4. measurable results, to confirm that the program is indeed effective at meeting the needs for which it was designed.

In February, we hired Roy Mesigwa to provide accountability for the money sent to fund the program, and to serve as our “eyes and ears” there. Roy is highly respected within the churches of Christ in southeast Uganda. He serves as a primary language instructor for missionaries in Jinja, and has extensive work experience with charitable non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Uganda. Roy is also supervising some other development work we have started in the area. For your information, Roy’s salary is funded from the profits of Victoria Nile Trading Co., the craft sale business we started in 2006 to help Ugandan women artisans access the U.S. market.

As of May 2008, we (all the sponsors) currently provide for 56 children. There are another 60 children who are waiting for sponsors, but I have not yet tried to recruit more sponsors. I told Ricky that it is wise to “walk before we run,” that is, to make sure the systems are in place to run the program properly before expanding.

Beyond the orphan care program, we are engaged in microlending and microenterprise development projects. The craft sales business is an example of microenterprise development—we purchase baskets and jewelry from Ugandan women, enabling them to buy better food, clothing and medicine for their children, and to pay school fees. We help the women to identify products that will sell here in the U.S. and help them improve the quality of their goods. In so doing we encourage them to be creative, to emphasize quality, and to be responsive to customers.

The lessons we teach are not just good business--they also reflect biblical principles of concern for others, responsibility for oneself and one’s family, the blessing of work, perseverance, and more. We also share some profits with the women, and some profits are returned to the communities in other ways. For example, in early 2008 we sent $500 of profits to assist Ugandan Christian families who had taken into their homes refugees who had fled the violence of Kenya’s recent political unrest. All profits of the craft sales support Christian missions in Africa.

Let me explain our microloan ministry by first introducing you to a courageous woman. Her name is Mrs. Muzenge. She’s probably in her fifties, and six days a week, nine to ten hours per day, you will find her as we did, sitting on her rockpile in a quarry outside Entebbe. With a hand sledge, she breaks stones the size of car tires into smaller and smaller pieces, finally into gravel for use in construction projects. A month of that labor yields her about $35, with which she supports an invalid husband and seven grandchildren--the intervening generation is dead.

It is a hard life, but it’s the life she knows, and it is a scenario repeated thousands of times over in Uganda, hundreds of thousands of times over in sub-Saharan Africa. This past January, through $3,000 allocated from the Missions Sunday collection at the Vaughn Park church, a microloan program was started among these women who work in this quarry. Mrs.Muzenge is one of the first group of 10 women. Another 10 to 12 women are waiting to enter.

Microloans are very small—most in the neighborhood of $50 to $100—but large enough to help someone start a very small enterprise. Ideally, the borrower is already economically active, in which case the loan can help her expand the business to a size that will allow her to repay the loan—plus interest—and contribute something to the betterment of the family. Microloans have proven effective in a wide range of circumstances, geographically and culturally, to help people extract themselves from poverty. Why loans? Why not grants? Why charge interest? I can’t explain the details of the loans in this letter (which is already much longer than I’d planned!), but you can read about them on our website: (www.microdevelopmentmissions.com). As always, I’ll be happy to address any questions you have about this work.

Among other activities, one purpose of our trip to is to document this loan program in writing and in video, so we can describe it, evaluate it, adjust it as needed, and replicate it in other areas. The program is overseen locally by James and Jemimah Semakadde, Christian businesspeople who own a guest house and retreat center near Entebbe. James holds a Master of Education degree from Harding University, and also serves on the Board of Directors for FINCA, the second-largest microcredit organization in the world. Our program is modeled after other successful microloan programs, but with the additional element that Christian principles of personal and commercial behavior are the foundation of the training and ongoing development of the women participating in the program.

We will be in Uganda for about three weeks. Our primary focus on this visit is to document the works going on at this time. We will be accompanied by Jeff Ireland, a long-time family friend, and one of my colleagues at Faulkner University, where Jeff coaches the women’s soccer team. Jeff will be bringing some quality video equipment, which we hope to use to produce documentary materials that will tell the stories of the children, the women, and these ministries. We’ll also be gathering information to help us evaluate the programs and chart the future of these and other development ministries in Uganda.

I don’t pretend to understand how God works in the world, nor am I certain what it is about this ministry that appealed to you. Whatever your reasons, Marlea and I are grateful for your financial, emotional, and spiritual support.

Maybe, if not for your support, God would find another way or another person to make this difference in your child’s life. Maybe help would come in some other form. Or maybe your sponsored child would not be attending school . . . not getting regular meals or essential medical care . . . not receiving visits from caring Christian counselors like Ricky, Jackie and Roy . . . not hearing that the God of all Creation knows him personally and loves her unconditionally.

Many thanks to our family at the Vaughn Park church for their encouragement, financial support, and prayers for us and for this ministry. We look forward to seeing you and reporting to you when we return.

If you are not sponsoring a child but would like to do so, or if you want more information, please email us at service@microdevelopmentmissions.com. The Vaughn Park Church of Christ is receiving contributions for this work, and contributions made to the church are tax deductible. Please be sure to earmark contribution checks for “ISAC” or “Ugandan mission.”