The $5 philanthropist

From Pig-e-Banks to Abortion in Uganda. I just found this interesting article online and I thought it would be interesting to get readers comments on it.

If you're a "lurker" on this blog, I'd really like to hear from you.

While in Uganda, I read in New Vision (a local newspaper in Uganda and the source of the article I have linked to), that the Uganda parliament was debating whether to legalize abortion in Uganda.

One of the Millennium Development Goals is to "reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio" in the world. Given that most all agree that a significant contributor to Maternal mortality is complications that stem from crude abortions.

This New Vision article I read tonight quotes a consultant gynecologist at Mulago hospital who said that "775,000 Ugandan women aged between 15 and 49 have unintended pregnancies every year and 297,000 have induced abortions." That number could be much higher given the primitive means of self-administered or crude intervention abortions that lead to severe injury and death to the woman that never receive medical attention and thus might never be counted as part of that statistic.

The Ugandan government is divided on whether to legalize and in what scenarios legalization occurs. In the same article, the gynecologist is quoted as saying "abortion was morally bad but because of the many deaths involved, it had to be thought about seriously and interventions made."

Clearly, reducing maternal mortality is a worthy goal. And, it stands to reason that one of the contributing causes of maternal mortality is death from crude abortions.

Should Uganda legalize abortion? Would legalizing it actually make a difference to those who need it most, the poor, rural women who will otherwise try to abort using crude techniques?

Would a medical NGO (especially one with US ties) dare to carry out proper abortions as part of a plan to reduce maternal mortality?

Does the "right to life" argument hold as true if the life in question is doomed to absolute impoverishment?

I want to hear from you.

Labels: abortion, africa, international, politics, uganda, womensrights

Just a final thought before leaving Kitgum. Last night I had dinner with a local contracting group that drills water wells for most of the NGO's in Northern Uganda.

Water is clearly a popular priority for donors and so NGO's looking to satisfy their donors drill multiple holes in one community so as to ensure equitable access.

From my discussion, it seems that there may be a bunch of sustainability issues that need to be addressed with the current method of providing water into communities here.

First, these hand-pumps are limited in yield to the manual output of the community members pumping the water;

Second (to the sustainability issue) is that the contractors were telling me that they have significant evidence that the number of wells per village is depleting the water tables and they have quantitative evidence of this that I am hoping they will send to me.

If NGO's were to focus on building one mechanized well with adequate water storage, the yield from a mechanized unit would likely dramatically increase (because it reduces the physical pumping requirement) and would reduce the depletion of the water tables.

I suppose the argument here is that it would create long line-ups at a centralized water distribution and that people would have to walk further. I think these concerns could be mitigated / addressed by good logistical implementation.

Obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about. Just my uninformed, naive opinion but as I've often learned, sometimes the dumbest questions lead to the most innovative answers!

Labels: africa, aid, development, kitgum, philanthropy, uganda, water

Tom & Egidio
Originally uploaded by tomgivemeaning.

Written at 7:30am, Sunday November 12th

Please read this blog entry in its entirety. It's my last post from Kitgum and you will quickly come to see why it might be the most special post of the trip.

I am leaving Kitgum this morning. Driving time is estimated to be about 7 hours but we might make a stop in Gulu. The cell phone network was down for most of Saturday and I was getting worried that I would not be able to get in touch with Okeny Egidio, who runs Northern Uganda Child Returnee Association ("NUCRA") the NGO supported by ugandayouth.givemeaning.com

Finally at about 6pm, the cell phone coverage was back on and within minutes of the network being on (such a funny thing to say about a cell network but such is life here) Egidio called me and we arranged to meet.

This is Egidio's story:

Egidio was abducted by the LRA when he was 12 years-old. He and a group of his fellow students were ambushed on their way into school. He and his classmates watched as his teachers were slaughtered and some of his other students were forced by the LRA to murder their teachers.

Constantly looking for an escape, he found an opportunity to do so when during a fight, the second-in-command lost his gun. He and about 10 other abductees tried to escape but it was in vain. They were captured and severely beaten. As punishment, he was forced to harvest honey from bee hives without protection or fire. The bees became so agitated and angry from Egidio's attempts at harvesting that the bees swarmed the LRA camp, and scattered the soldiers, providing a great opportunity to escape.

Egidio ran from the camp as far as he could and hid alone for days in the bush eating whatever he could to survive. After days of running, he came across a village and a village priest helped him to a Ugandan army barracks. There he was interviewed, given some food and then dropped at an IDP camp. Through a Welcome Centre (like the one I wrote about earlier this week), he was reunited with his family.

He couldn't stay in his own town (for fear that the rebels might come back) so he completed his O-Level (Grade 10) in Western Uganda. In 2001, he completed his A-Levels (graduating from high school). Shortly thereafter, his sister (his only remaining member of his family) was killed by a land mine along the Kitgum-Gulu road.

NUCRA - My best and final story from Kitgum
Egidio finally felt safe enough to return to his home here in Kitgum. Almost immediately after returning, he and six other young abudctees that he met at the Welcome Centre, started a brick-laying business for income generation. They continued to grow their brick-laying business and at the same time, Egidio secured his diploma in Public Health, and began overseeing contracts for the local districts. From a portion of his salary, he re-invested this in expanding the scope of NUCRA activities.

Now NUCRA stands at over 20 members, each of them former abductees and war affected youth. They have now grown their revenue-generating activities to pay for the education costs for three war affected young people (currently ongoing) and have gained respect from bigger NGO's and city districts to be hired to oversee local projects. NUCRA requires each member to pay a one-time startup fee of 5,000 shillings (about US $3) and an annual membership fee of 10,000 shillings (about $5 a year). This way, members are more invested in NUCRA's activities. What's amazing to consider is that these young people, all former abductees and war affected youth are investing their time and money into an organization to support other war affected youth. Without a doubt, this is the model that we as Western Donors should want to support.

GiveMeaning in action
GiveMeaning donors paid about $2,000 US for a Grinding Mill which has now been in operation for a little more than 2 months generating a net income of about 90,000 shillings (about US $50) in September and 130,000 shillings (about $70) in October. It may be difficult for some of you to imagine that this amount of income makes an impact but here in Kitgum, it is sufficient to significantly contribute to the income of the three young people that NUCRA is sponsoring.

Seeing the Grinding Mill in operation, reviewing the accounting and talking to Egidio about the impact that the Grinding Mill is having in just its first few months of operation was one of the most proud and meaningful moments of my life. It's quite an amazing concept to consider: Chris & Jeannie (people I've never met and who heard of GiveMeaning through a friend) came to the site, posted a project to support war affected youth in Northern Uganda, and a short while later had raised money amongst their friends and family and then here I am standing here seeing with my own eyes seeing the positive impact generated from these funds. It reaffirms for me everything that we are doing. I have in fact been so caught-up in my head (asking questions of Egidio and thinking about how to further support NUCRA) that I hadn't stopped to consider how I feel about meeting Egidio and seeing the project. The pride, gratitude and inspiration that I feel is just too much to even try to put into words. For now, all I can say is that everyone who has worked so hard to make GiveMeaning what it is, everyone who has supported us financially, who has promoted us to their friends and family, we should all feel incredibly proud of what we have built.

Totally shocked to learn that...

Egidio presents himself so well, is so well-spoken and is so efficient with NUCRA's activities that I had assumed he was probably around my age. It absolutely shocked me to find out that he is only 18 years-old!!! This incredibly well-organized, driven entrepreneur who is committed to making his community a better place and who has turned the horrible attrocities that have been inflicted upon him, his family and his community into such positive change is only 18 years-old!!

I am totally humbled by Egidio. Without a doubt, he is the future of this country.

It's now time to leave for Kampala. It will be more than 500km of driving today.

Labels: africa, kitgum, tomstrip, uganda

Hey everyone,

I have posted three separate blog entries today including a video clip that I shot in Kitgum this morning so please be sure to scroll down and read all three entries.

Thanks,


Tom.

Labels: africa, kitgum, tomstrip, uganda

Written 9:30pm, November 10th, 2006

My own editors note: This blog starts off as rather depressing / disheartening. Please don't stop reading until you get to the part where I see hope.

I'm thoroughly confused. This is not because I imbibed a lot (though easy to do with beer that costs less than a dollar Canadian per bottle) but because the conversations that I have had tonight reveal a different reality on the ground than I have heard described in the last few days.

What I have been hearing about in the last few days is that it is anticipated that the current peace discussions will soon result in a definitive peace agreement that will see a substantial number of LRA rebels allowed to leave and return to their homes. The peace talks are still very fragile and nothing is definitive.

Furthermore, even despite a broad peace plan between the LRA and the Ugandan Government, many expect that factions of former or current LRA fighters will create their own bandit militias. I worry that if this Peace Agreement is signed, that the perception in the West is that "all is good in Northern Uganda" and donor interest in the area will fade away.

Annexing of Camps
I had the privilege of meeting with and discussing the situation of the IDP camps with some of the larger organizations working on protection in the IDP camps and the stories are disheartening. Earlier in the week, I had been told that it was expected that many people would be leaving the IDP camps to return home to the places where they had left before moving to the camps. In speaking with some of the representatives of the larger aid groups on the ground, I realize that this is only partly true. Yes, some families are being invited/asked to leave the IDP camps but where many of them are returning to are essentially new "annex" camps, meant to simply make room for more people. But these new camps are not actually their homes (ancestrally) and worse yet, there is little to no infrastructure in these new camps. No schools, no latrines, no security, etc. So in fact, the IDP situation might be getting a whole lot worse.

Women's security in the camps
One of the biggest issues in the camps is rape and women's security. Because often the husbands and fathers are leaving sometimes weeks at a time to try and set up their new location, women in these IDP camps are vulnerable to rape. Worse yet, there remains little to no protection against sexual and domestic violence in the camps and the counseling and after-rape "care" often adds more psychologically destructive trauma to the woman. According to the NGO representatives I met with, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) is leading the way in terms of Gender Violence Prevention programs in the camps. They are getting a lot of respect from other NGO representatives that I speak to which is great to hear. As most of you know, we share our offices in Vancouver with MSF and I have a lot of respect for their organization.

Big agencies are leading the way
So where does it get positive? Well, the first bit of good news is that the big name agencies are leading the way. Unicef and IRC are all doing really wonderful work in building usable assessments of each IDP camp and what resources they are missing. If all goes according to plan, this should help all NGO's in the camps better invest aid dollars more efficiently. There seems to be great disparity in the resources available in each camp. For example, one of the camps that I was at today (where I met the young boy in the photo in this blog entry) was swarming with NGO's and yet most of the children under 10 that I met were all not enrolled in school because simply there was no primary school in this particular camp! Then, moving on to Padibe later that day, that camp seemed so much more resourced than the other camp.

So being able to accurately map what's missing from each camp should focus the efforts of the big aid organizations.

And now for something completely different...
The second observation that I must share (and what has become a theme of my blogging on this trip) is the resilience and strength of the human spirit despite tremendous adversity. This is exemplified in the children that I met at the camp where they have no education. They are frustrated and saddened by their inability to receive an education, and yet they hold out hope and do as much as they can to prepare for the day that they return to school.

And I can't talk about the strength of the spirit without talking about religion in Africa. First, a preamble so you know where I am coming from. I know I am not the most powerful person in the world. I know that when two people get together, their collective power is stronger than that of their individual power. This understanding formed my first belief in a "higher power." Today, I have a more spiritual concept of a "power greater than myself" but I do not belong to any religion nor do I pray to a specific god. I do pray and pray often but not in a dogmatic way. It is impossible to be in my position and not feel the need to call upon some higher power to help the people I serve.

In the work that I do as CEO of GiveMeaning, I serve the passions of many faith-based communities. For the people that I serve, their faith in their God drives them to do good. From what I have seen and experienced, their desire to serve has not been rooted in some ulterior political or religious motive. It has purely been to honor their God by serving to the best of their abilities. This isn't to say that such ulterior motives exist in some religious organizations and people. It's just that I haven't seen this in the projects funded through GiveMeaning.

Here in Africa, there is so much faith and worship in a Christian God. Whether an organization is purposefully "faith-based" or not, most every organization will be serving clients who are for the most part themselves Christian. At the beginning of this blog entry, I had promised to share good news after starting with bad news. As uncomfortable as this may be to hear for some of my readers, one of the best things to happen here is the amount of people who believe that their God has a plan and purpose for them.

What creates this hope and happiness?
As controversial as it is for me to say this, I believe a large part of the happiness and hope that I have written about in the past few days comes from the deep faith that many of the people I have visited here have. While on a purely intellectual basis, the statement that faith should cause someone to be happy, should be relatively easy to accept as logical, the very mention of "faith" and religion brings even the most otherwise open-minded people to a complete mental shut-down.

But the purpose of this blog is to share openly share my observations without prejudice and so I share these observations with you.

An understandable proposition
Putting myself in the shoes of many of the people that I have met, I look at it this way: Accepting God believing that by doing so, I will be shown a new life; That god has a plan for me and my future is incredibly desirable. Switching now to my own view of this proposition, I see tremendous concern with this promise.

Want to move a mountain? Pick-up your shovel
On this trip, I was with a young woman (now 18 years old) who had just told a small group of us about her experiences being kidnapped and forced into slave labor in the LRA, including being impregnated with her now 1 year old boy. One of the men in the circle asked to pray for her. As she is Christian, she welcomed this prayer. But in his prayer, his response to her was but to pray for her and for her situation to be improved. This rang hollow and empty for me.

There is that story about a man praying to move a mountain and waking up to find a shovel next to his bed. My point is that prayer itself is not enough to help this woman, to give her the funds she needs to fund vocational training or to buy her drugs to relieve the constant pain she feels from the torture that the LRA inflicted upon her.

And so here's the connecting point:
The Christians from the West that are coming here on mission trips are often humbled by the strength of the faith here in Africa. Many Christians that I have spoken to have said that they came here thinking they were "bringing God to Africa" and left realizing that they were "bringing God back to Canada" or the US or wherever they're from.

So my concern about the promise being made to the people here is in great part addressed by the sheer number of people coming here out of their own desire to serve their God who do their best to live up to this massive promise/expectation implicit in the faith of the people by returning home and raising funds and awareness and support for the communities that they have recently returned from. They are not just praying but feel as though they are being called upon by their God to serve the Christian people in Africa. In Uganda alone, more than 85% of the population is Christian. Eighty-five percent! That so many Westerners are coming here on Mission trips and coming back to their churches and broader communities and taking it upon themselves to raise funds, awareness and resources for their Christian brothers and sisters, how can this be wrong?

What we are talking about
We're not talking about colonial approaches to religion or political persuasian. What we're talking about is people whose suffering is eased by their faith and about people who are humbled by this devotion and are then inspired to help by whatever means they can. We're talking about everything that humanity should be about which in this case happens to be connected by a shared set of beliefs. Nothing more. This is not a blanket endorsement of all faith-based initiatives but a suggestion that those of us who bristle at the very mention of "faith-based" reconsider our prejudices.

For many people I know back home, faith has lost its meaning or been co-opted to describe what is often a political agenda. Here faith is powerful, radiant, calming and beautiful. And this faith - so far - has been everywhere I have been.

Labels: africa, faith, kitgum, religion, tomstrip, uganda

My best friend in the camps.
Originally uploaded by tomgivemeaning.

Written at 2:30pm - Saturday, November 11th, 2006

This little boy came running over to me as soon as he saw me. He was the happiest, most energetic person I have met in all my travels in Kitgum.

He lives in an IDP camp. In this picture he is holding tightly in his palm a Canadian penny that I gave him.

My mum had asked me to leave something in Africa of Canada as she has never been and this was her request to me.

I had been looking for a place to put it and when I met this little guy, the decision was clear.

The unfortunate reality is that most of the youngest kids in this particular village don't go to school because there is currently no primary school in the village.

Labels: africa, kitgum, tomstrip, uganda

Written @ 12pm Saturday, November 11th, 2006


This morning I walked into town to go to a peace march which I was told would start at 9 this morning. I'm realizing that things happen on a much different time here. There were a bunch of kids playing soccer so I asked to join in. After earning my credibility in a penalty kick competition, I was invited to play in their match. With all my diving, I cut myself pretty badly.

Disinfecting the cut with Purrell burned pretty badly.

I saw some of the kids later (on my way back into town for the peace march). I am now called "Goalie Tom."

I'm sure my brother Hugh will laugh at this video.

Labels: africa, kitgum, soccer, tomstrip, uganda

Godfrey and I talk about Concerned Parents Association
Originally uploaded by tomgivemeaning.

I set out on a walk by myself early this morning and met with a few locals and one Italian NGO. I was conscious of the fact that breakfast was waiting for me and so came back to the place I have been staying at within about 20 minutes of starting my walk. After breakfast, I posted my first blog entry (written the night before) and then a small group of the men I'm traveling with (Kent, Mike, John and myself) set out on another walk. Within maybe 10 or 15 minutes, we walked by a place called Concerned Parents Association ("CPA"). As we walked by, I waved at one of the guards at the entrance and he waved back. I decided to walk over and strike up conversation with him.

I met CPA's project coordinator for their Kitgum Welcome Center. A welcome center is a place set up to receive the young men and women who escape from the Lord's Resistance Army (aka "the LRA") and want to reintegrate back into society. These young men and women were abducted from their communities as teenagers (and sometimes younger than 13) and forced into the Lord's Resistance Army. Some have managed to escape and/or have been captured. Now in their late teens or early twenties, they arrive at Welcome centers where they are provided counseling and care; are provided introductions to vocational training; and the centers work to help identify and locate these young people's family members. When family is found, the centers like Concerned Parents Association work with the families and the community to help facilitate the re-introduction of these young people back into their families and into the community.

The CPA was started by a group of parents at a nearby school called St. Mary's who had all 130 of their children abducted by the LRA one night. These parents banded together and started CPA on the hope and faith that their children would come back to them and would need a place where they could return and receive the support they needed before trying to re-integrate back into family and community life. The facilities then got international funding and there are now CPA Welcome centers in some of the key villages in Northern Uganda. Of the 130 children, close to or just over 100 of the children from St. Mary's have returned.

Godfrey's Story
Godfrey, the Kitgum project coordinator was about my age. He spent close to an hour with us and talked to us about the CPA program in Kitgum and in the other villages. Towards the end of our time together, I asked him why he worked here. This is what he told me: When he was a young boy in 1st grade, his father was abducted by the LRA. His father was a teacher and as I understand it, his father was abducted along with the whole class. A year and a half later, his father refused to follow the orders of his abductors so they beat him to what they thought was death. Left for dead, he crawled into the bush, badly beaten but managed to get to a nearby town. Godfrey then told us of being in third grade, two years after his father was abducted and getting pulled out of his classroom and told that his father was alive and that they would be reunited within the week.

Standing in CPA's housing unit (pictured in this blog entry) where five young boys are currently living after recently leaving the bush, and listening to Godfrey tell his own story about being reunited with his father was an amazing testimony to the work that these Welcome centers provide. There are so many other people here serving their communities with similar stories.


Seeing the need first-hand
I have now visited three Welcome centers, all established to serve the young men and women who had been kidnapped and forced to serve the LRA as both child soldiers and for the young girls, "wives" of the soldiers though calling them wives utterly demeans the word.

The Ugandan Government and the Lord's Resistance Army have been holding peace talks, following a cease fire that is now in effect and it is hoped/anticipated that within the next very short while, all the young men and women will be free to leave the bush and begin the process of returning to freedom.

This afternoon, I was in Pader at an "IDP" (Internally Displaced Persons) camp. I met with about 12 young children (the eldest being no older than 18), all of whom had been captured and had later managed to escape. These young people were at a facility run by Christian Counseling Fellowship ("CCF") and yet again, the staff I met were incredible. None of the young people spoke. They didn't need to speak in order to convey the trauma and sadness they carry with them. But one boy who throughout the time we were with him looked straight down at the ground, I caught his eye for a moment and smiled at him. He smiled a very shy smile back. Isaac, one of the coordinators at the camp, spoke about the progress in the children's rehabilitation. There is hope everywhere.

As I currently understand it, it's the job of the Welcome centers to provide often the first psycho-social counseling and services to children leaving the LRA. At all three camps that i have visited so far, they are all in start-up mode.

If the peace agreement is actually put into effect, all of these Welcome centers expect to be at full capacity. From my current understanding, these facilities will be an incredibly important part of ensuring the reintegration of these children back into their families and communities. By no means, a small task.

Unfortunately for Godfrey and the CPA in Kitgum, they have currently lost their funding and most of their staff hasn't been paid in two months. When I came into Godfrey's office, he was working on a funding proposal for being able to accommodate up to 200 people at the Welcome centre, based on the assumption that the peace agreement goes into effect. This could happen within the next 30 to 60 days, and at present time he doesn't have the funding to accommodate this influx, not even the interim operating capital to sustain operations.

A Surprise Phone Call
After an incredibly long day of driving, we got to the local hotel back in Kitgum (which I'm told is occupied almost 100% by visiting NGO staff hang-out). We were having a beer and talking about the day when my Uganda cell phone rang. It was Chris Blattman (one of the two fundraisers raising money for ugandayouth.givemeaning.com) calling from Berkley, California.

I have never met Chris nor Jeannie but I feel like we're old friends. I have talked with them many times in the last few several months as they continue to fundraise at GiveMeaning to help the community of Kitgum. He was calling to introduce me to the local workers here in Kitgum that oversee their project.

It was great to hear from Chris and I want to get both his and Jeannie's opinion about the role of Welcome centers in the psycho-social counseling and rehabilitation process. If you check out their project and their founder profile at GiveMeaning, you will see why I trust their opinion.

I will certainly share more about the Welcome centers as a I learn more about them. One thing that no one's opinion or information will change: My impression of the people working as counselors and coordinators in these centers. They are so totally wonderful, intelligent and dedicated.

On the lighter side
Looking at the comments people have left, I realize that my family has now tuned in to my blog so I want to share some personal stories about the trip: I am sharing a small room with three other men. There are two bunk beds and I am sleeping on one of the top bunks. It's important to keep a mosquito net draped over you when you sleep so the nets run from the ceiling down to the floor. The nets on the top bunks essentially act like our sheets though Kent (on the other top bunk) seems to have more slack with his. So I'm sleeping like a fish caught in a net. Despite this, I had a very comfortable sleep.

Breakfast was great! We had coffee that was grown and picked in Uganda and it was such a good cup of coffee! Toast, beef sausages and fresh eggs all hit the spot. We did A LOT of driving today. To drive from Kitgum to Pader took at least 2 hours each way. There were seven of us packed into one Land Cruiser, driving on totally unpaved roads with massive pot-holes throughout. Driving is the incorrect term to describe the experience. More accurate would be "slaloming" the road. The entire time, we were swerving across the width of the road avoiding as many of the big pot-holes as we could.

When we got to Pader, we were very hungry and decided to eat in town. The restaurant was a tiny room about the size of my office (no not the whole GiveMeaning office, just my little office) and our party of seven filled up the restaurant to capacity. The food was beans and a white "playdo" like substance. It's basically corn flour and water. We had a big chunk of the stuff and a plate of beans and sauce. I was so hungry that I just started ripping off the pieces of corn flour and dipped them in the beans and sauce. None of us finished the corn flour we received (I wish I could remember the name of this stuff ) but I ate about half of that and all my beans.

After lunch in Pader, we drove to a town called Lira Palwo where we visited another IDP camp which was at least 40 minutes maybe even an hour drive from Pader. So today there was A LOT of driving.

It's now 12:32 in the morning here (1:32pm back in Vancouver). Everyone went to bed about an hour ago and if my internal clock wakes me up at around the same time this morning, it means I'll be getting up at around 6am. I do not have regular access to email so please leave comments here on the blog as the best way to get in touch with me. I'll now save this to my word processor and then post it when I get internet access tomorrow morning my time.

There is SO much that happened today that I have not written about that happened today. I want to write it all here but I also realize how long this entry already is. I guess I will start writing separate blog entries about individual parts of my day.

I should end in saying how truly grateful I am to be here. The people I have met have inspired me more than some of my greatest heros and mentors. I get pretty emotional just thinking about visiting Chris & Jeannie's project tomorrow.

This will be the first ever project funded at GiveMeaning that I have actually visited in person. A trend that I want to become a habit, if there is an appetite amongst the GiveMeaning community for the blogs, and media that I'm sharing on the trip.

Chris & Jeannie's project has always been one that I have said is an example of exactly how GiveMeaning works. That I am here in Kitgum and will be seeing their project with my own eyes is just so exciting for me!!!!

Goodnight.

Labels: africa, kitgum, tomstrip, uganda

Mike showing the picture
Originally uploaded by tomgivemeaning.

I have just thrown away a rather long-winded blog entry that I decided was taking too much effort to present my experiences today as cemented conclusions. I don't have any conclusions. And I am totally and completely humbled.

I must admit that I know feel as though my attitude has been arrogant completely about charity and philanthropy in Africa. Despite truly, deeply caring, I went about funding projects here based on a "we need to help them. We've got so much and they've got so little, and so it's our duty to take care of them."

What I saw here today in KItgum was an expression of caring, of community togetherness, and of social consciousness that trumps anything I have seen anywhere else in the world.

There is so much happiness, so much love, so much caring here. There is intelligence, capability, commitment and resolve to solve the problems that kill their fellow citizens. There is so much hope and so much strength here.

This is but one story that exemplifies what I mean: I walked into an AIDS hospice for women this afternoon. In this hospice at the end of the room were two older women sitting on a rug on the floor in front of an empty bed with a few pieces of clothing on it. As I walked closer to them, I realized that amidst those few pieces of clothes, lay a 5 month old baby girl whose mother died of AIDS few months back. The baby is most likely HIV positive. So far, this is a story told a million times before. Here's where for me, the story changes:

First, the two older women. The baby is not related to either of them. They are there not as nurses but as concerned members of the community doing what they can to just be with the baby: Not really volunteers, just people who have come from the community to be with this baby. Second, to the strength and commitment of the staff at the hospice: They have invested a tremendous amount of money in this baby's care and health because they believe that there is a possibility that the young baby might be able to make it. And finally in the baby herself: I began holding her hand and as she got more comfortable with me, she grabbed on to it more tightly and waved her arm while holding my finger. All I can say was that I felt her strength and it floored me.

This has been a wonderful first day for me as it has shifted the way I look at practicing philanthropy. We are part of the solution but us and our money alone is not the solution. The good news is that - at least in this community - they are ready, able and willing to join in the solution. In all of these struggles that challenge life has come this strength and tenacity that feels powerful enough to change anything.

I know some of my friends reading the blog might roll their eyes in thinking that I am quick to find enthusiasm and excitement for new people, places and things. I am uploading this on the morning of my second day here in Kitgum. I went for a walk alone in the neighborhood that I am staying in and talked with many of the villagers. I am feeling so grateful for the opportunity for these conversations and for just being able to be here. My battery is about to die so I have to end this now.

Because of the slow connection, I can't upload many pictures so I'm choosing only a few each day.

Please go to flickr and search using the term "tomstrip" to see other pictures.

I'm hoping to post again tomorrow.

Take a look at ugandayouth.givemeaning.com, the first project we have funded in Kitgum. With luck, I am hoping to meet some of the people involved in the project over the next couple of days.

Labels: africa, kitgum, tomstrip, uganda