Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

By: Mia Lei, GlobeMed Intern

Hi there! My name is Mia Lei, and I’m a rising junior studying Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am also the incoming internal co-president of GlobeMed at UNC, the student organization partnered with Raising the Village. I am very excited to intern with RTV this summer with 2 fellow Carolina students, Anne and Danny.

For our 6 weeks in Uganda, we each have different tasks. My main tasks include working with the staff on basic computer training (like DropBox and Excel), creating a skills training plan, and developing user-friendly data collection worksheets. Because all of my tasks revolve around working with the staff and getting their input, I accompany the staff and my team on their village visits to gain an understanding of the challenges they face in data collection.

For our first day of work, Naomi, the Uganda Programs Director, planned for us to do a field visit to Grace Daycare Nursery and Primary Orphange School as an “orientation”, per se, to RTV’s methodology, projects, and stories. Grace is in the first village that RTV partnered with in 2007, and has progressed immensely since. Because their ultimate goal is a self-sustainable village, RTV is not intensively involved in projects at Grace anymore, but they still go to Grace occasionally to check-up on the status of projects, which was our goal for the day.

After a couple panic attacks that we were driving on the wrong side of the road (Uganda drives on the left of the road, the US drives on the right), we arrived at the front door of Grace, in Nanga village. 

 

We were greeted by Madame Liz Mukiibi, the Director of Grace, who invited us into the office to talk about the story of Grace. Although she is small, Liz is by no means a weak woman. She projected this elegance and strength as

she walked; she was soft-spoken but her words were powerful.

In 1996, Madame Liz’s sister Regina founded Grace Daycare and Orphanage School with the vision of providing a space to care for and educate children orphaned by AIDS and other circumstances. She herself was HIV-positive and had lost 3 brothers to the disease, each with children, so she saw great need in her village. “It was her heart and desire,” Liz said. Since then, Grace has faced many challenges. Four years later, Regina passed away from complications due to AIDS and Liz, who had been teaching part-time, stepped in full-time to keep the struggling orphanage and school open. The wooden buildings were ravaged by termite destruction, and Nanga was suffering as more and more were lost to the AIDS epidemic. Liz called a meeting and soon the village envisioned a cement and brick building filled with desks for the village children, orphaned and unorphaned alike.  They bought sand and cement, which parents used to make bricks. Through community effort, they built the first cement classroom.

 

What made Grace successful was the enormous amount of community support that poured in; the village believes that Liz is doing great work and support in any way that they can, whether it is funds, food for school lunches, or labor.

But still Grace struggled with financial issues, as most orphans needed full scholarships and others with parents had difficulty paying the 3000 shilling (USD $1.20) school fee. Many struggled to purchase uniforms for their children at a cost of 2000 shillings (USD $0.80). To put it in perspective, we spent that exact amount on 4 mangos several hours later.

In 2007, Raising the Village began its partnership with Nanga. Liz had the vision, but the means simply weren’t coming together. Seven years later, Grace is now flourishing and self-sufficient.

 We walked around the grounds with Madame Liz, and saw the projects the community and RTV had built together. In exchange for the community's construction efforts and labor, RTV provided leadership training and the materials to construct 4 additional classrooms, bathroom facilities, and staff quarters. We saw the rainwater harvesting system, a pig co-operative, and community garden. On the way, we passed many villagers who smiled at Madame Liz; it was clear that she was an admired figure.

The school is thriving as one of the best in its region, with 13 orphans and ~150 students. The orphanage is sustained by the income generated by student school fees, pig cooperative subscription fees, and profits from the community gardens. The village is flourishing.

Liz was the one who brought the village together to build that very first cement building in 1998, and once more in 2007 when the partnership with RTV began. She continues to build community throughout the work in the gardens. This extraordinary woman, with all of her ambition and vision combined with resources from RTV, has quite literally "raised a village."

I think this is a perfect description of what RTV does. Despite its fantastic staff that are equipped with experience, expertise, and economic aid, RTV doesn’t swoop in and assume that it knows the needs of the community and how to best approach them. Aunt Liz had a vision for Grace, she knew what the community needed, and she knew how to fix it. She was simply lacking the means to do it, whether it was funds, supplies, or training. And that’s where partnering with RTV comes in. But the story of Grace started before RTV with a vision and a dream for a village, and will continue long after, equipped with the means to be sustainable. It was astonishing to see the real effect that RTV can have during its involvement; I came in with the notion that long-term sustainable aid takes is slow, immeasurable, and unseeable; that was smashed on the first day. I can’t wait to see what the next 40 days will bring.