Emily joins the team in Kampala

We have just returned from five days in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement with several Educate! students in tow. Breakfast this morning is plump chunks of avocado fresh off our tree in the Educate! compound and sugary African tea. Joseph Munyambanza gathered the avocado for us – he is staying with us until his flight to South Africa where he will attend the African Leadership Academy. Sitting next to him is Nziyonvira Ntakamaze leafing through Educate!’s latest Annual Report. Nziyonvira blew me away in our first conversation when he told me he wants to be a gynecologist, a decision he made after seeing the hardships of mothers in childbirth in Kyangwali, where at night the closest hospital is a 60km walk away. Down the hall, Rachel Uwimana is preparing her application for nursing school. Despite her tiny frame, Rachel is one of the most outgoing women I have met since arriving in Africa, and has enough spunk to take on all the Educate! boys.

Spending the last few days in the company of these students and many more in Kyangwali, I understand Eric’s drive and motivation more than ever. The work the Educate! students have done to bring the community in Kyangwali together is inspiring. We attended club meetings of COBURWAS (currently working on organizing a nursery for orphans), the Anti-violence group (a support network and forum for women) and the Cheyeye group (a 1,000 member group of children who gather food and sing traditional Congolese songs to new mothers) all led by Educate! students. The leadership roles Educate! students have taken on in their community is the inspiration behind Educate!’s new programs and its mission – to educate and empower the next generation of socially responsible leaders in Africa.

What drew me to Educate! was not just this mission, but a belief in its method. Having grown up moving from country to country, my own education has been a jumbled product of the Japanese, British, French and American educational systems. Each system had its strengths and limitations, and I have come away with a deep conviction that education should go beyond memorizing textbooks and practicing standardized tests. It should be a time to ask “what is my potential?” instead of “what is the exam like?” I studied for my A-levels at the best British school in the country where acquiring top marks was the focus and an entry to Cambridge or Oxford presumed. The goal was not to encourage individualism, or a push to find and challenge one’s own goals, but instead a push (and a shove) to ensure my school continued to be at the top of the league table by churning out women who knew how to write 4 perfect essays in a 3 hour exam. After graduating, I made the choice to go to the most liberal educational system I could find (Brown University) where I could take charge of my own education and self motivation. At Brown it was never, “here’s what you need to know for the exam” but instead a challenge to really critique the world outside of the classroom to say “what can my contribution be?”

Educate! is not about to take over school curriculums or go to war with UNEB (The Ugandan National Education Board). We are pursuing a constructive approach, partnering with schools that understand our philosophy to provide what I think of as an Educate! package – the Socially Responsible Leadership Course (teach & inspire), the Social Entrepreneurship Clubs (practical application) and mentorship (support and encouragement). In short, the Educate! package is a long-term investment in each student with the goal of creating powerful agents for change. Our Educate! students from Kyangwali are only the beginning!

Angelica tells me she is reminded of Ethiopia here. I’m reminded of my teenage years in New Delhi – lopsided hand painted advertisements, piles of weary shoes laid out on pavements, fluorescent plastic and in particular the pollution and the weaving traffic (only minus the cows). I’m back in the developing world where life is a contradiction between street peddlers with crusty shirts sticking to skinny shoulder blades and polished white landrovers zipping along with smart suited executives. I’ve settled into life in Kampala like a return home, accepting the snail-paced internet connection and the fact that being half Japanese will never prevent me from being labeled a Muzungu (white person). Occasionally I get slightly miffed (upset) when Angelica & Eric gang up on me about my British accent. On my end I have had to interpret conversations such as the following:

Angelica: Yo, E-money, we boda-ing?

Eric: Word

On a more serious note however, what I call Angelica’s “American-ness” is really a deep well of creativity and enthusiasm that she is instilling in the SRLC curriculum. My more reserved “British/Japanese-ness” has been serving only as a cultural filter for some activities that Ugandans (used to a British curriculum and teaching style after all) could find bemusing. While Angelica is creative genius extraordinaire, my role will be more on cultivating and managing our relationships with partner schools and overseeing the logistics of the program. With my background in business and consulting I feel we are a well balanced pair together! Most importantly, we’re both convinced that Educate! will instigate great social change and cannot wait to get the programs started.

The day before we left Kyangwali, Wereje Benson described Educate! as a match – one strike and vast plains of Africa are alight. So keep watching…

Emily

Angelica touches down in Uganda

Oliotya (hello),

This is Angelica Towne writing to you live from my new home in the Pearl of Africa. Firstly, I am honored to be a part of the Educate! family and extremely proud to represent Educate! in Uganda for the next year. From inspirational humble beginnings, Educate! is soon to emerge as a powerful force of social change in Uganda and even greater Africa. This short month in Uganda has exposed me to the core values of our organization and that youthful indomitable conviction which characterizes all great breakthroughs. I can honestly say that here I am daily inspired anew.

When I arrived in Kampala I couldn’t believe I hadn’t returned to Ethiopia. They share metal sheet rooftops, perilous ditches for rainwater run-off and the sweet smell of passion fruit. Going to a local Ethiopian restaurant for dinner my first night didn’t help my disillusionment. There are also similar signs of poverty: small street children scattered across the city, heads down and hands outstretched, sitting cross-legged on the dust-red asphalt, inches away from hot boda boda exhaust pipes and billows of black smoke. In especially smoggy alleyways of downtown Kampala the air tastes just polluted enough to remind me of my winter romping in pre-Olympics Beijing. Chinese characters also dance across the face of countless taxies and imported trucks. My limited travel however has never led me to encounter the beautiful diversity of birds and flora that I have seen across Uganda.

The learning curve is steep here. By day three I was out discovering the wonders of Kampala’s public transportation system alone; by day five, I was contributing to meetings with partner school teachers; within the first week, I collaborated with the savvy intern named Helaina to think of a profit generating activity for Educate!; and finally, by day fourteen, I started to receive phone calls from someone other than Eric. I learned quickly that you can bargain for just about anything here (for hours if you are with Eric) and the midnight pineapple truck in the old taxi park is definitely worth the wait. Mainly, I learned that I had a lot to learn: about Ugandan social issues, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and an interesting school called Cornerstone Leadership Academy if I was going to make the necessary progress on the socially responsible leadership course’s curriculum development. Cornerstone teaches the principles and precepts of Jesus as a leader instead of focusing on his traditional role in Christianity. It hopes to unite all religions and peoples in the name of Jesus as an exemplary leader and human being, rather than a religious figure. For example, there is the principle of resourcefulness, committed relationships, and servant leadership.

Our curriculum draws heavily on the principles taught by Cornerstone, as well as some things from the African Leadership Academy and LEAD International. We are compiling curriculum from these different organization’s models because they are proven to be effective and cross-culturally relevant. In addition to compiling and integrating the curricula of these sources, I have included some of the leadership training exercises and multi-cultural games I’ve learned in my years of working in non-profits. Truth is that I didn’t actually “work” for these nonprofits as much as I was raised and molded by them. Growing up in the public housing projects of East Harlem, I know firsthand what it means to be literally saved by nonprofit organizations that embody creative solutions to society’s opportunity gaps. At Kyangwali Refugee Camp, Benson Wereje, Bahati and I swapped stories of how we all received “sponsorship” or scholarships to attend university and how it changed our lives forever. I felt such a beautiful solidarity with our students and reaffirmation of the necessity of work.

My college sponsorship organization is a New York based non-profit called Posse. Similar to the evolution of Educate! programs, Posse began with the idea of providing more students with a quality education so that they could somehow better society and join the workforce. The founder of Posse, Debbie Bial, shortly realized that she could do and needed to do so much more than simply provide funds for higher education; now, Posse has a six-month intensive leadership and diversity training program which sends groups or “posses” to top liberal arts colleges across the country with the challenge to the students to become leaders and change-makers on campus. The scholarship money was useful in opening the iron doors of opportunity, but more importantly, the training and continued support of mentors on campus opened the doors to our hearts and minds. Posse gave me the skills, confidence, and support to believe that a short halfrican girl with no money and even less confidence could be powerful. I made my voice heard on campus, took action in my local community, worked internationally, and finally accomplished my dream of working for student empowerment in the developing world.

My goal for the socially responsible leadership course and everything we do in Educate! is to empower students to realize their potential and actualize their dreams. The worst aspect of poverty is mental. Poverty erodes your self-esteem: you feel the world would probably be better off without you since you obviously can’t contribute meaningfully to society much less control your own life. I am proud of Educate!’s new focus on both financial assistance and empowerment. With our programs, we can change the course of children’s lives and the future of a nation.

African Warmth,

Angelica Towne

Program Director

An Intern’s Reflection

Hi everyone!

My name is Stacey and I’m one of this summer’s Educate! interns. After an incredible month in Uganda I returned home inspired by Educate!’s progress and sad to leave the country behind. Quickly, I’m going to try to bring you up to speed on the goings-on in Uganda through the day I left four weeks ago. Here goes…

Julia and Helaina left off with our exciting adventure down the Nile. During the next week we continued to run from school to school making connections and building relationships with administrators, teachers and students. The following weekend, Eric, Nate and I traveled to Mbale, a city 4 hours east of Kampala at the base of the beautiful Mt. Elgon. The crazy weekend started when our bus hit a woman and was impounded. We all piled into a second already-full bus; Eric ended up sitting beneath a rather large woman and Nate and I sat on the floor next to the driver about a foot from the windshield. Luckily, we arrived safely, and over the next day and a half met with each of the five schools we are working with in and around Mbale. The following day we held the first cluster meeting attended by representatives from each of the schools.

Back in Kampala it was business as usual. We continued to identify potential partner schools and to solidify our relationships with the schools already on board.

Near the end of the week, four interns (Julia, Helaina, Nate, and I) headed to Hoima to meet with our partner schools there and conduct a cluster meeting as we had in Mbale. The cluster meeting was a huge success; the representatives from the Hoima schools were extremely talkative and offered many valuable suggestions for the implementation of the programs in their region. The highlight of the trip, however, was arriving at Kitara Secondary School to find the COBURWAS members huddled up singing their club anthem. COBURWAS (standing for Congolese, Burundese, Ugandan, Rwandese, and Sudanese) is the club started by several Educate! students in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement, and they had spent the day cleaning up Kitara. Agnes, a teacher at Kitara, spoke about how inspiring the club was; when she was first told that there’d be a group of students volunteering at the school, she was skeptical – what type of students would do something so wonderful for the school without asking anything in return? She was overwhelmed when students showed up from all over Hoima to pitch in. It is these students and the wonderful work they are doing that give her and us confidence in the new Educate! programs. We hope that, with a little encouragement, students all over Uganda can be inspired to give back to their communities in the way COBURWAS has. Many of the Educate! students are model socially responsible leaders, and our new programs are designed to give more students the tools and confidence to follow in their footsteps and realize their visions for their own lives.

After our Hoima cluster meeting, Julia and Nate returned to Kampala while Helaina and I endured the bumpy taxi ride to Kyangwali. During our two days in the settlement we attended church with Joseph Munyambanza; visited the homes of many Educate! students, COBURWAS members, and other friends in the camp; walked the 14 km to and from the medical center right outside the settlement; played volleyball with primary school students; and uprooted potatoes at the COBURWAS orphanage, making us both the first white people to dig in the camp and the first volunteers at the orphanage. We returned to Kampala exhausted but content.

After a few more days of visiting schools around the capital, it was time for me to leave. I was sad to leave the work and the people, but inspired by everything I had seen. Educate! has found some amazing partner schools to work with – ones that understand and value socially responsible leadership but haven’t yet found a way to encourage it in their students. That’s where our programs come in! With the full support of our partner schools and the vision provided by the current Educate! students and COBURWAS, I am confident in the success of the programs.

I apologize for the length of this post, but there is really so much to tell! I’ll wrap it up now by sharing with you a letter written by Joseph Munyambanza to Educate! supporters. For me, ending with Joseph’s words is fitting. I started corresponding with Joseph three years ago, and the friendship he’s offered has been amazing. He is incredibly inspiring in both his personal relationships and vision for his life and contribution to his continent. Joseph will be beginning school at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa in September, and I want to wish him the best of luck. And, with that, here are his words:

Special thanks to my caring parents/guardians in Educate!

Surely, I cannot precisely express how much you mean to us, our community, country, our motherland Africa, and the world at large! I am very sorry my words cannot give the appreciation you deserve. They can at most give 1% of it.

The best gift a parent can give to the beloved child is nothing rather than education. The exact gift you have provided to us when we and the world around us greatly need it.

Man’s needs are said to be endless and most especially at the youth stage. It is always difficult for a parent who loves his child to satisfy his/her needs. All Educate! students are in this youth stage and this means that Educate! parents could find it hard to meet their children’s needs. In Educate!, our parents loving us sincerely and wisely, they have not provided whatever we need, but have provided what is fit for us and the world around us. The education you are giving to us is so precious that it will help us to satisfy our needs and the community’s needs.

I thank you for everything you have done for us in Educate!. you have changed our behaviors. You have built our hope for the future. You have shown us the key to the future. You have given our vision a good base. And now we dream big day and night. Our dear caring guardians/parents, a list of what you do is so big and kept on the flashes of our hearts and our future will give the details of your good concern.

We feel supported all the time. No matter how far you are from us, you hear us when we cry for help. Thank you for your kindness, humility, strong and unique love you have for Africa. You have loved us without knowing us. We are so grateful, delighted and excited of your wonderful love.

You have decided to reduce your meals because of us. You have sacrificed your sleep in search of our school fees and other scholastic materials. You struggle here and there so as to keep us at school. You have done much in favor of our community’s future. You have inspired us through what you do. Now the question we have is “what will our community be like in 15-20 years to come?”

Personally, I am living like a runner in a race. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training so as to get a crown. I therefore focus to my vision. I do try all I can to maintain discipline, carefully following the footsteps of my role models and making it simple for those who will consider me their role model.

May Almighty God bless Wolford’s family abundantly for considering me part of their family, Stacey Frumm for being my close friend, Mom Beth for the spiritual food and other good things she does in the refugees’ camp in Kyangwali. And may God bless all Educate! donors because their contribution to our community and Africa at large is so excellent.

Thanks very much (100%).

Sincerely,

Joseph Munyambanza