No. Hand In Hand is a 501c3 Not-For-Profit Organization dedicated to providing Education and Health Care to Ugandan villages. Relief is not the solution, we must provide development for the long term empowerment of Uganda. It is our mission to provide schools, teachers, clinics and health education to establish an infrastructure that is sustainable by the Ugandan people.
Of course flying to Uganda to establish relationships, evaluate need, project the distribution of funds, and monitor there progress on funded projects is greatly necessary. Funds for this trip will actually help me address some of your same concerns. I want to KNOW the people that I am working with and the political climate of the country before giving any money for development efforts.
What exactly is done to help the village & which NGO is doing it?
Initially, my involvement was to secure funds that are hard to raise by fund-raisers, funds of substantial amounts of money for a Health Care clinic, something like a doctor's office here. However, the school established in Bugabo has lost international funding through Uganda Project Resource Society in Canada. This organization's organizing members have became very old and have not been able to work (This is a lot of work!) to raise funds to keep the school running. This seems a pressing issue and will be evaluated when I go there.
Hand-In-Hand and Resource Network Uganda will be working together to secure funds, assess needs, and budget for development efforts. On this trip, we will create a budget of operation for the school and will explore resource options, not excluding those that are already established in the region. Typically schools are supported by outside entities, although Uganda's National Policy is that all children “should” go to school. I could write a book here about the extreme need for an over-haul of the school system, especially the Secondary School system where my heart lies, but I will stop here, and we can address those issues as they arise.
What steps are taken to make sure the aid money is spent on what it is intended for and not raided by corrupt government officials?
According to my colleagues at Project Resource Network in Uganda and discussions that I have had with teachers, headmasters, and college professors, the government leaves schools along. They do not participate in funding them, but they also do not take the money given for their operation. Typically, villages build, staff, and run their own schools with outside donorship. This is part of the reason for my trip. I need to see what is going on first hand in order to be able to make good judgments about how, when, and why to distribute money. Note: Uganda is surrounded by countries like the Sudan and Republic of Congo, and we are all aware of the atrocities that have been committed there. Most refugees from those countries reside in the Northern part of Uganda. Bugabo is in the central region near Kampala; however, refugees and regional political instability is also of concern to us.
If this is part of a church mission, will it be sensitive to preserving the cultural heritage of the village's belief system or is the aim to replace it with Western Christian theology?
We, of course, will be working with religious people, mostly Christians in Uganda. The influx of aid from Western religions organizations has been the backbone of change for many Ugandans. Most call themselves Christians. However, Hand-In-Hand is not a religious organization, and our mission is not to carry the message of Christ to Ugandans. Replacement of indigenous beliefs with Christian ones has actually been going on for many years. I asked about the religion before Christianity early on in my relationship with some scholars, and the answers that I received were vague and full of negative connotations. All of this, I believe, has to do with the fear that help will not be received unless some profession of faith is involved. I am very interested, personally, to learn about past cultural heritage and how this has come to integrate with Christianity or any other religion in Uganda. You know we never leave anything totally behind, but integrate it with the new.
Is sex education and realistic family planning involving access to birth control on the agenda?
This is one of the first questions that I asked of a Health Professor at United Christian University in Uganda. The research that I have done through the World Health Organization states that AIDS reduction has been a result of the massive numbers of people that died with it in the 1990's and because polygamous family structures have been replaced with monogamy (because of Christian influence). However, the numbers are again on the rise. From what I can gather, officials at the university level that value secular ideas based in science, fully support the message of condom usage; however, some religious organizations do not. If you think about this it it not much different than in the US. However, they DO understand that sex can mean death, so in many cases all organizations are open to education about birth control involving condoms. Abstinence teaching has be the primary source of birth control in the country. In our schools, we are only able to legally teach abstinence in schools, but we get around that in many ways. Uganda is not different. One of my main health concerns is female health: the availability of birth control, condoms, and education on female medical issues.
Thank you all for your donations, emotional support, and thoughtful considerations of issues that are important to development in Uganda!
