Annual Kaberamaido Youth Conference

The Kaberamaido district, like other areas of Uganda has been ravaged by years of civil war. Although peace was achieved over a decade ago, this district which is home to 100,000 people is still in the re-building process. Refuge and Hope has partnered with local leaders in certain key areas within the district to implement community development initiatives. These initiatives focus on sustainable agriculture, education and computer, business and leadership training for adults and youth.

Recently, Refuge and Hope hosted the annual leadership youth conference in Kaberamaido. The two day conference focused on God's empowering and transformational love and Christ's call to love others and do justice within their community. The two day conference consisted of games, worship, teachings and discussions. The conference at and in partnership with a local church in Kaberamaido who Refuge and Hope has built a relationship with in the area. Forty children and youth attended from the area.

Group photo of leaders and youth

Youth Conference Leaders: Missy, Angelo, Francis, Haryet, Lino

Playing duck duck goose with the younger children.

Church children's choir

Francis teaching the youth dancing and gymnastics

Haryet and Lino with some of the youth leaders

Haryet leading the youth in a group game

Dancing during worship

Dancing during worship

Joseph, one of the youth leaders having a discussion with the youth before the teaching began.

Listening to the teaching

Closing prayers

In front of the new Refuge and Hope Community Center in Kaberamaido. The center will open in August. There will be daily computer classes and periodic leadership trainings held at the center.

Posted by: Missy

The McCalley's Visit Uganda

We were able to spend three weeks in July visiting Jade and Shelah in Uganda, which we hope is our first trip of many! We initially got connected with Jade and Shelah through Cooperative Baptist Fellowship about a year and a half ago, when we emailed them to find out if there were any field personnel working with former child soldiers. We had no idea that connection would eventually lead us to Uganda!

While we were in Uganda, we were able to experience a little of each Refuge and Hope project. We spent several days at the Center of Hope, experiencing their outreach to refugees in Kampala. Here is a picture of Stephen working on the computers...internet was a source of frustration, especially after the July 11th bombings damaged the cable!

We traveled to Greek to meet members of the community and do a little construction on the community center. Here's a picture of Courtney with students at the school in Greek. We were the ones taking a break from the soccer games.

We then went to visit the widows and Arrow Boys' gardens in the Kaberamaido district. We enjoyed working side by side in their fields and seeing the how hard they've worked to support themselves and their families. Here is a picture of us, members of Riverside Baptist Church in Alabama, Jade, Harriet, Pastor Julius, and the widows holding some recently harvested cassava!

Finally, we met with Pastor Stephen Bamoleke to discuss the DRC education project. Our church (First Baptist - Winchester) has been involved in sponsoring the students in the program, and we were able to discuss ways to develop our relationship with the students. Unfortunately, we were not able to meet the students on this trip, but I'm sure we will be able to get to know them in a future visit!

We are so grateful that we had the opportunity to visit Uganda and build on the relationship we've started with Jade and Shelah! The highlight was meeting with Pastor Bamoleke about the DRC project and being able to give input into the project's development.

Update: School Supply Distribution

This past weekend Harriet and I were privileged to travel out to Kaberamaido and see many of the widows that we partner with in the village of Otuboi.  Since it was the weekend, several of the widows' children also came out to see us as we did another round of school supply distributions for this school term.  

We had to fight through some heavy rains to get everything distributed (thank God for rain in Kaberamaido!), but everyone was in high spirits and so grateful to see us and to receive the books and pens for the children to use in school.  We were also able to share a bit more with the women and students about the children in the US who are praying for them and who have given their offerings to provide the supplies.  We told them how much the children in the US enjoyed seeing the video we made of them, and to show their appreciation the women sang, clapped and prayed, thanking God for such friends.  Likewise, we hope that you all will continue praying for these women and their children!

Here are some photos from the day:

Update: VBS Project

For those of you who organized a missions focus on Refuge & Hope during your Vacation Bible School this summer, we have a special update!

This year we encouraged churches to teach children about the work that God is doing in Uganda through Refuge & Hope and to put their special offerings toward a project we are doing with widows in a small, rural district of Uganda called Kaberamaido.  This is an ongoing project to provide notebooks and pens (required school supplies) to widows who cannot afford these things for the children they are supporting to use in school.

We had a wonderful response from churches, and are so grateful to all of the children who gave so that children in Uganda can go to school prepared and equipped to learn!  We were even able to get a bit of video footage from the last distribution, and would like to share it with you all here:

Again, we want to say a big thank you to all of the children and church leaders who are helping to make this project possible!

We are committed to providing these school supplies for the next few school terms in hopes that this assistance will lift part of the burden for these widows in caring for these children and enable them to focus more of their time and resources on income generation for their families.  If you would like to contribute to this project, please email shelah@refugeandhope.org and let us know!

Update: Agriculture Trainings in Kaberamaido

Exciting news!  The training programs for the widows and Arrow Boys in Kaberamaido are being set into motion!

I was so pleased to travel out to Kaberamaido recently with Jade and Harriet to make things official by signing Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with both groups for which we are coordinating agriculture trainings.  With all of the ceremony, you would have thought it was the president signing a bill into law!  We had the leader of each group sign, along with the local agriculture expert who will be leading the training sessions, and a handful of other witnesses.  Each person gave a little speech before signing, we had a special pen just for the signing, and I played the role of paparazzi, snapping photos of each one as they put pen to paper.  

Each of the 20 participants (10 from the widows group, 10 Arrow Boys) are very excited and ready for the trainings to begin.  We will provide 20 sessions total, as well as the seeds and other tools needed to plant.  The participants themselves have provided the land for the gardens that they will plant, and each participant will return a significant portion (at least 1/4) of the harvest to his/her respective group.  Through this, we hope and pray that the impact of our investment will spread far beyond these 20 individuals to reach others in their group and the community at large.

It was very exciting to get things moving forward on these projects, and we look forward to seeing things progress.  The trainings, however, have not been able to begin now as planned, due to lack of rainfall and drought in Kaberamaido.  This has also led to problems of food shortage and hunger in the area.  Neighboring districts are facing famine, and the local news reports that about 40 people have died of starvation in these areas.  

Please join us in praying for people suffering from hunger, for rain to fall on this dry land, and for each of the people who will participate in the trainings in Kaberamaido.

Our new Kaberamaido project facilitator, Harriet, adding her name

Update: Team Visit to Kaberamaido

In the last post we talked about our recent trip to Kapchorwa with the U.S. team from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.  Taking up from where we left off, we finished off our time in Kapchorwa with a hike around beautiful Sipi Falls, and then we headed out to Kaberamaido district for the next week.  Our time there was very full!  We spent each afternoon that week with 150 wonderful children at the orphanage - doing Bible story skits, playing and doing sports camp, and giving them enough mosquito nets so that each child can now sleep under a net.  Our time at the orphanage was a highlight for me personally, because the kids there are just lovely and received us each day with such joy and enthusiasm.  We were also happy to be able to leave some sports equipment and other things we used for VBS activities with the orphanage for them to continue using in the future.

A young girl coloring a picture at the orphanage in Kaberamaido

Each morning of the week was spent moving around and doing different things.  One day we went to Keller Port, a poor fishing village on Lake Kyoga, to do a net distribution.  We provided the community with 200 treated bed nets, and that distribution was probably the best and most organized one that we did.  Then another morning we had a meeting with the Arrow Boys group we're working with to pray for them and hear more about their stories.  We also met with the widows group we're working with in Otuboi to pray with them and distribute 2,000 notebooks and 500 pens for their children and orphans they care for to use in school.  We were able to bring greetings from children in the U.S. who gave their VBS offerings to this project, and the women were so excited to hear about these children and immensely grateful for the book and pens for their children.  They told us that they struggle to come up with the 6,000 Ugandan shillings (about $3 USD) that it costs for the pack of a dozen books that we gave each child, and that the books and pens would really help facilitate their children's education.  

Students carrying their school supplies home

We finished off the team's time in Kaberamaido with a weekend youth conference that we organized for 100 secondary school students.  Our friend Alfred, who is actually from Kaberamaido, led the conference on issues of character, leadership and developing a vision for their life, and it went really well!  It was a great way to end our time in Kaberamaido.  The team helped lead small groups to discuss what Alfred taught during the group sessions, and we also facilitated other games during the two-day conference.  The students were so glad to have us there, and it was exciting to hear their plans and dreams and to talk through issues with them.  

At the end of this year we are planning to return and spend a day in each of the five schools that participated in the conference to follow up with the students.  We also hope to hold another conference in early 2010, and if you would like to contribute to the next conference please email jade@refugeandhope.org and let us know!

Students from the youth conference posing with Carson

Update: Kaberamaido & Greek

Things have been rather busy around the Uganda Refuge & Hope office lately!  A few of us recently returned from a trip out to our project sites in Kaberamaido district and Kapchorwa district.  David Harding, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's International Coordinator for Emergency Response, also accompanied us on the trip.  He is an agriculture and water expert, and he gave us (and the people we serve) some great advice along the way! (see photo below)

David Harding showing a group of widows the health benefits of a local tree

In Kaberamaido, we met with two different groups that we will be providing agriculture training and implements to.  One is a group of ten widows, and the other is a group of ten "Arrow Boys," former village defenders against rebel attacks who have now been demobilized and many of whom returned home to great losses of property.  There are also women in the Arrow Boys group who were either fighters themselves or are widows of Arrow Boys.  The meetings went well, and we hope they will be able to begin training/planting in the next two or three months.

In Kapchorwa, we met up with one of the local bishops, Pastor Thomas Godwin, and went out to a village of formerly displaced people called Greek.  I first visited Greek less than a year ago on a short-term visit to Uganda, and I was deeply impacted by this community and its lack of basic necessities such as clean water, health care and education.  Seeing Greek was actually what prompted me to pray about returning to Uganda to volunteer with Refuge & Hope.  I am happy to report that there has been good progress in Greek these past few months, including a health center that is being built and four water wells.  Refuge & Hope plans to join this progress by helping the community to build a multi-purpose community center to serve as a church building, school facility and community center.  We hope construction will begin in the next couple months.

We are also busy making arrangements for a small group of students from the U.S. coming to do sports ministry, VBS activities and mosquito net distribution for three and a half weeks next month.  The team will be ministering in both Kaberamaido and in Greek, and we appreciate you joining with us in prayer for their safe arrival on May 31 and their ministry while they are here with us.

Click here to see some of my photos from the recent trip to Kaberamaido and Kapchorwa!

P.S. - We still need to raise a bit more funds for the community center in Greek.  If you'd like to contribute, please email jade@refugeandhope.org or donate through our Facebook page!

Calling All VBS Groups!

Looking for a way to get your church involved with the work we're doing here in Uganda?  Think VBS!

Refuge & Hope has developed a simple project for children in your church to do during Vacation Bible School this summer. We're encouraging churches to dedicate the offerings they bring during VBS to one of our mission projects benefiting widows and their children here in rural Uganda.

After meeting with many widows in the district of Kaberamaido (see previous post), we have felt God leading us to work with a specific group of widows in the community of Otuboi. These women are organized as an inter-denominational Christian group, and they are hard workers struggling to provide for several children, including their own children, grandchildren and other orphans. Specifically, they said they find it very difficult to pay for these children to go to school. Many schools have fees, and while some public schools do not technically have school fees, children are often required to have other things in order to attend classes - things such as exercise books, pens and uniforms. The widows we met struggle to pay for these things each school term.

Therefore, we've offered to help by providing exercise books and pens to the widows to give to their children. But we need your help! We need your help to raise the money to provide these notebooks and pens, and we want to give children in the U.S. an opportunity to not only learn about other children around the world, but to also respond by doing something concrete for those children.  We've created a short, simple video that you may show to your children during VBS to introduce them to Uganda and the widows we want to help.

If you'd like to receive a copy of the video or the information sheet shown above, please contact us at shelah@refugeandhope.org.  We would love to share more information about these widows and children with you.  And if you have any other questions about the VBS project, please don't hesitate to let us know!

Update: Kaberamaido Church Leaders Conference

We at Refuge and Hope International are excited to report that last week we led a successful training conference for about 75 pastors, lay leaders and other regional church leaders in a rural district of northern/central Uganda called Kaberamaido.  Participants came from all across the district to take part in the 3-day conference focused on spiritual leadership.  We are extremely grateful to Jerry and Dorothy Hubbard, who came out from Alabama to help lead the conference.  Jerry led the main teaching on spiritual leadership and Dorothy led a workshop on prayer and provided invaluable assistance for the rest of the conference.  Along with Dorothy’s session on prayer, Refuge and Hope staff members led additional workshops on various topics including counseling, youth, chronological Bible storytelling, stewardship, and HIV/AIDS (taught by a local Ugandan expert). 

I cannot tell you how encouraged our Refuge and Hope team was by the whole event!  The participants were a joy to be with, and our local committee of people who helped coordinate the event was well-organized.  The pastors and church leaders who participated in the conference were SO grateful for the opportunity to receive Bible training – something they say they can't get enough of out in the rural areas - and we were able to leave them with some good resources, including a copy of the New Testament in the local language of Kumam (see photo). 

We also made a point to give participants some down time, including opportunity for recreational games (volleyball was a favorite) and a showing of the Jesus film.

For me, one of the highlights of the entire conference was a workshop on engaging youth in ministry that I led along with my Ugandan colleague, Harriet.  The first day we had a good group of pastors who work with youth, but the second day we decided to pull in some youth who had been hanging around and helping out to join us and have an honest discussion of what youth need to get involved in church ministry.  We had such fun laughing with them and exchanging ideas.  It makes me excited about going back to engage these youth again; in fact, we’re planning to hold a conference for youth in Kaberamaido in June, so please be in prayer for that! 

All in all, the conference was definitely a hit, and I am grateful that I was able to be a part of it.  I really believe the Lord spoke to these church leaders through the teaching, and I pray that He would continue to mold those people into the leaders He's called them to be in their churches and communities.  Please join us in that prayer!

-Jennifer Wilmore, Special Projects Director (Volunteer)

Jennifer is a volunteer serving with Refuge and Hope in Uganda over the next several months through CBF’s Student.Go program and the generous support of her family and friends.  She enjoys traveling, eating beans and rice, and hearing Ugandans clap and laugh when she uses simple Kumam phrases on them.