Incoming! — Getting Ready for the 2016 UVP Intern Cohort

By Kelly Child, UVP Managing Director

What do we do before interns arrive? The short answer—A LOT.

The longer answer: we prepare for their arrival by meeting with existing and new villages, securing seven houses in remote locations, take stock of supplies and replenish or replace necessary items, and strategize the best way to transport thousands of kilos/pounds of housing items and people. 

What do we do when interns leave? We reflect on what went well and how we can improve, and then immediately start planning for the next cohort.

That’s right, almost as soon as interns leave we start planning for the next cohort. Internship may be only eight weeks, but months and months of work go into this program.

It’s easy to not notice the hours of planning and strategizing, the many meetings with community members, and the countless discussions surrounding the best protocols and strategies for collecting 40+ people from a city 180 kilometers away, housing and feeding said people, conducting an impactful orientation, setting team leaders up for success, and then safely delivering all those people to the village. There are a million details and some of them change at the last minute.

Recently, during an executive committee meeting made up of Local Council leaders and Village Health Team members, I witnessed a discussion about beds. Not mattresses, but bed frames. They’re not common in the places we work, so rounding up six of them to provide for interns requires an entire village. Literally. And the best part: the communities we work in see the value in working to provide our interns with a comfortable, safe place to live.

Our newest set of villages—Mwendanfuko, Namunsala, Namafuma, Bufutula A, and Bufutula B (don’t worry, a few weeks ago I couldn’t pronounce those either)—are in Namungalwe Sub-county and a short drive from our office. And from our interaction with them to this point, they are just as excited about the incoming interns as we are at UVP.

We are looking forward to meeting you!

~Kelly, Managing Director

VHTs brainstorm ways to better health

By Rachel Bridge, UVP Partnerships Officer and Global Health Corps Fellow

Village Health Teams are a national component of the health system in Uganda, but to us they are individuals with big hearts and great ideas, and not just a national system. They are people like Jessica, worried about access to family planning for the women in her village, and James, who is navigating his desire to improve health in his village in the midst of difficult village leadership.

At the core of UVP’s Healthy Villages Model is our partnership with Village Health Teams (VHTs). Fifteen years ago, Uganda’s Ministry of Health introduced VHTs as the national model for health intervention at the community level. There is meant to be a VHT for each village in Uganda, comprised of 5-10 community members chosen by their fellow community members to promote the health and well-being of their village. VHTs are responsible for building a strong foundation for community health improvement by providing education, prevention, and support. Within their community, their job is to mobilize for health activities, promote health to prevent diseases, treat simple illnesses at home, check for dangers signs in the community, report and refer community sickness to health workers, and keep village records up to date.

Partnering with VHTs keeps our work grounded in community knowledge and empowerment. The VHT members in our Healthy Villages are the pulse of their communities—deeply invested in the activities, challenges, and experiences of their neighbors. They are caretakers, mobilizers, educators, and leaders, driven by a desire to improve the health of their families. And in the villages that we work in, your family extends to your entire community. 

At UVP, we work alongside the VHTs in our Healthy Villages to build capacity in their health knowledge, sensitization skills, and community mobilization strategies. In addition to their government training, we train our VHT partners in the information and sensitization skills of our program areas (malaria, family planning, HIV/AIDS, WASH, and obstetric fistula), while providing referrals and additional information for identified community issues that UVP programming does not address like bed bugs, jiggers, and malnutrition.  

The work that VHTs do is essential to improving community health, but can also be stressful, frustrating and time consuming. We periodically check in with our VHTs during meetings, outreaches, and mobilizations to troubleshoot the challenges they are facing. This past month we met with the VHTs of Kitukiro, Bukakaire, Nabirere A, and Nabirere B to discuss obstacles and successes in their work. The meetings were dynamic, full of laughter, debate, reflection, and problem solving.  Our conversations tackled challenges on the personal, team, communal, and structural level. Sarah and Sulaina, VHTs from Nabirere A and B, asked about building a more effective team dynamic, leading us to a discussion about personal responsibility, structuring team accountability, and systems of incentive. Jessica, a VHT from Kitukiro, raised the concern that the approaching rainy season would prevent community women interested in long term family planning services from accessing those services at our partner clinics in Iganga town due to increased workload on the farm and poor road conditions. Together, we

looked at different ways to accommodate these women through strategic scheduling, partnerships, and other means. James, a VHT from Bukakaire, spoke of challenging interactions with local government leaders (LCs) who thought the VHT was there to undermine their authority. We resolved to hold a meeting with the LCs to clarify the purpose of the VHT as a resource for community health initiatives. 

Our relationships with our VHTs are rooted in dialogue, empowerment, and collaboration. These VHT meetings are essential to the constant improvement of our programming to better serve the communities we partner with. We are so proud of the strong partnerships we have built with our VHTs and can’t wait for the VHT training sessions we will be holding throughout April!   

Filling important roles in communities

Uganda Village Project’s reproductive health outreaches are for women to learn more about safe pregnancy and child spacing, and receive contraceptives if they would like. Why would a woman who had gotten a tubal ligation years ago come to an outreach?

That’s the question we asked this month when a woman showed up at the outreach in Nabirere A village. The answer was that she was sick, she had nowhere to go, and she trusted UVP. The nurse who accompanies Maureen on family planning outreaches examined the woman and declared she needed to go to the hospital. She was sick and she desperately needed a blood transfusion. Everywhere you would expect to see blood vessels running under the skin, she was simply pale. Ultimately, she decided against going to the hospital, although we were prepared to take her in the UVP car as we left the family planning outreach. She wanted to get her household in order before leaving, and we reluctantly left without her.

UVP works on education, access, and prevention. We don’t provide clinical care and our role is to refer people to treatment instead of provide medical advice. The simple fact is that we are a small organization, and we have to choose where to place our focus because we can’t do everything. This story could be about the gaps this creates, but instead it highlights the broad impact we have in rural communities.

First, the Village Health Teams in this community are clearly doing a good job at spreading awareness about the outreaches. This woman wouldn’t have been seeking out information on reproductive health, since she’d had a tubal ligation, but she still heard about the outreach and arranged to attend. Second, communities trust us. It’s hard to admit when you’re sick and seek help, but this woman made an effort to come see us and ask what she should do. Our goal is to pass on this role to the Village Health Team members so they can continue to be referral points in their communities. Third, we can’t do everything, but we provide a crucial link to additional services if we don’t provide them ourselves. In this case, we referred the woman to the hospital and we are following up with her to make sure she gets herself treatment. We do similar things when we pass on information to villages about traveling clinics for eye diseases or connect households with places to buy water filtration systems.

Access, education, and prevention. These words focus us, but they also encompass a wide variety of roles we play in rural villages. They are roles that we are glad to fill as we work with partners to ensure that communities have the opportunity to improve their health and well-being.

A conversation about fistula

Last year Rachel Bridge, one of UVP’s Global Health Corps Fellows who is working as our Fundraising and Partnerships Coordinator, went to the pre-screening site before a fistula camp. While she was there she talked with Loy, our Fistula Coordinator, and with Nalwoga Annunciata, a nurse at the health center we’ve used to refer patients since the early days of Uganda Village Project (UVP).

Rachel: I would love to hear more about your work with UVP’s Fistula Program.

Nalwoga: I started with Julius (Ntalo) in 2003; it has been a long process. Moving slowly slowly. There is nothing bad in this world like a fistula...We have been working so hard here, going slowly, slowly. And Loy has done a good job. 

When I went with Julius to collect the clients the ladies were hiding. I remember one woman so vividly. She was hiding, like a snake coiled up. She had been living with fistula for such a long time. Fistula always means broken marriages, no help, no support system, community denial, isolation, no income generating activity...the smell repels anyone in the house. That woman was alone in the house. Her husband had left, her family had abandoned her. I remember we finally convinced her to get the surgery, Julius guided her out. After the repair of the fistula that woman looked very well. She uncoiled.  

These women: how much they suffer from fistula. But we have worked with so many women and the work has been successful. Now they live such full lives, they marry, and they are all so beautiful. Just look at Loy, look at how beautiful she is! She once suffered from fistula and now she is running this entire program and doing such a good job.  

Others come here when they have lost hope. They say it is a curse, they say it is bewitching. They don’t know the cause, they don’t know it comes from obstructed birth. A young girl from Namayemba, she got pregnant when she was very young, 13 maybe. She was giving birth at a traditional birth attendant. She had a big baby and they made her push. As she pushed she got a fistula. She traveled 4 hours, can you imagine, 4 hours as she is in labor, to get medical care. But the baby passed away before they could reach the health center. Can you imagine?

Loy: We are always lucky with Nalwoga (who is a nurse at that health center) because we have never gotten a fistula from here.

Nalwoga: Never. We have never gotten a fistula from this health center because we refer early. We always have early referrals and safe deliveries.

(Rachel, Loy, and Nalwoga started talking about the upcoming camp, where the first stop is the pre-screening at Nalwoga’s health center.)

    

Nalwoga: I always receive them (the patients) here, and you have to make them very happy and very jolly.  

Rachel: I am sure you are the jolliest welcomer.

Nalwoga: I am!  We sing and welcome them. There is even dancing! You will see!

Nalwoga: We have saved so many lives. I don’t want people to die from here.  

Loy: Many women prefer health centers to hospital because the midwives in the hospital, they are abusive.  

Nalwoga: In midwifery you must be kind.  

Loy: When I was giving birth I was referred in time but they made me wait. So when I came and waited, it then caused the fistula.  

Nalwoga: Those who have been taken for fistula repair, those doctors have done good work for our clients. And now people have started coming out. There was a woman in Tororo, Loy, tell her about it.

Loy: Amor Margaret. The woman had a fistula for over 30 years and she was abandoned by her husband and family. She went back to her parents’ home and they gave her a tiny part of their land to build a small house and live alone. A man got my contact to help this woman. The first time I saw her I thought she was (mentally ill). But in reality, she wasn’t, it was her fistula and her situation that made her (mentally ill). The abandonment. The isolation. I brought her to the camp and, God’s mercy, she was repaired. And when we came back everyone wanted to see the woman who had cured her. When I was there was a big crowd of people to see who I was. There was such a feast! They prepared me chicken, matooke, drinks. And after, they packed me take away for everything. She told me “whenever I look at you, I see my life.” She asks for me to come to her every month. She is now accepted by the family members. She is social in the community. She is now one of our Fistula Ambassadors and she has identified so many patients. Ah, Margaret.   

Making plans for 2016

By Leslie Stroud-Romero, Executive Director

2015 felt like a great year for Uganda Village Project. You can read more about it in a previous post from our Managing Director, Kelly Child, but we got the chance to do a large survey to determine the effectiveness of our work, we received a record amount of grant funds, and we started dreaming of the future.  

The end of the year is always a good time for reflection, and with all the talk of resolutions, the beginning of the year seems like a great time to think about what’s ahead. We’ve done both over the past few months.

In October, our staff (with special guest Alison, in Uganda for the first time in six years!) met in Iganga to discuss programs, staffing, and other things we want to focus on in the next three years. In November, we did the same thing with the Board of Directors in Portland, Oregon.  As we held both of these meetings, we reviewed what donors and partners have helped us to achieve in the past few years. Every year we become a stronger, more effective organization. That set us up to talk about how we want to continue that growth for the next several years. By combining staff and board feedback, we agreed to focus our efforts on:

• Increasing our income and diversifying our funding sources to be able to grow and reach even more people in the future
• Systematizing our monitoring and evaluation processes so that we can build on project strengths and adjust areas that aren’t as effective
• Getting UVP’s name out to new audiences to grow our donor and partner base
• Continually improving the internship program, especially by offering more options for long-term engagement with intern alumni and adding components to keep our internship a competitive program
• Reviewing our staff and office systems to make sure we have the support we need to run programs efficiently
• Using the large-scale survey to look at where we need to make program improvements and implementing new program areas as needed to offer villages comprehensive support to improve health

These six areas may sound overly administrative and full of nonprofit buzzwords, but at the core of each focus area is the idea that we want to give each community in Iganga the best chance at improving their own health. Increasing our revenue means we can add programs or increase the number of villages we serve each year. Focusing on monitoring and evaluation means we’ll be able to easily share our impact and ensure that each project provides the best outcome for the money spent. Expanding our name recognition means we can partner with other proven organizations or donors to become even more effective. Setting up a well-staffed office in Iganga with strong administrative systems will give each of our programs the support we need to make a difference.

Over the next few months, we’ll be creating action steps for each of these focus areas and they will guide us in our work for the next three years. We’re all excited for what’s in store for UVP. We’re even more excited for the donors and partners who have walked alongside us to help us make a difference in the lives of families and villages in Iganga. It’s a wonderful feeling to receive donations from people who have been faithfully giving for years, as well as welcome new people into the UVP family.

We’re not looking to make drastic changes over the next few years; we’re proud of our work and grateful for the people who have helped us change lives. We simply want to be as effective as possible, and we think focusing on these six areas will help us do that. As we move into 2016, thank you for the support you’ve given to UVP, and we look forward to the year ahead!

2015 year in review: the launch pad

Kelly Child, UVP's Managing
Director, shares about what
we've done in 2015...and
what's next!

By Kelly Child, UVP's Managing Director

Squeezed in to our modest office in Iganga, every staff member of UVP along with Alison, our fearless leader and Board Chair, are sitting focused on Leslie, our Executive Director, while she guides us through the beginning of our strategic planning meeting. This was one of the few moments of quiet during our session. We visited our strengths, explored what was working with our programs, and envisioned our future. 

Although more formal than most, this was only one of many planning meetings that staff held this year. We are laying the framework to make some profound shifts in programming in the coming years with the goal of increasing our efficacy of each of our programs. But these pending adjustments doesn’t mean work doesn’t continue in the meantime. We've done a lot in 2015 -- and the year isn't quite done!

For our fistula program, our partnership with Uganda Childbirth Injuries Foundation is going strong and the Fistula Foundation awarded us a second grant to find, transport, and follow up with fistula patients from Eastern Uganda. This year we provided these services to 46 patients and plan to continue with another camp in February 2016. 

Orrin and Julius, our first cohort of Global Health Corps (GHC) Fellows finished their time with UVP by conducting a follow-up survey in coordination with Iganga District. This survey compared level of education, practice of behaviors, and other public health knowledge areas between intervention villages, ones that UVP had already worked with, and non-intervention villages, ones we have yet to work with. Overall, the level of education and practice of intervention villages was between 10% and 27% higher than non-intervention villages. Our second cohort of GHC Fellows, Ruth and Rachel, will be continuing to refine our monitoring and evaluation processes as well as define and implement communication processes and new elements to our summer internship program. 

Internship this year was very successful! We hosted 40 international and national interns to work in seven villages: 4 launch teams, 1 follow up team, and 2 project teams. One of our launch teams in Nabirere B identified an opportunity to empower young girls in the village by providing a forum to discuss challenges of being a girl in the village, ask questions about health topics, and receive positive support for their future dreams, or just give them permission to dream. Elements such as these are being considered in future programming to provide an even more holistic approach to our Healthy Villages model. 

UVP staff members were not the only ones reviewing and dreaming about the future of our organization. The Board met in Portland, Oregon to review previous versions and draft a new three year strategic plan. From this, we will evaluate the best ways to proceed forward in order to make our programs even more effective. 

All exciting things! 

You see, making changes doesn’t necessarily happen all at once, but then you look back and you see just how far you have gone. We wouldn’t be making the strides we are today without the support of donors like you. Thank you! 

Becoming part of a community

By Rachel Bridge, Global Health Corps Fellow

When we first met Kaudha Nola at a screening before fistula surgery, her eyes and voice told a story of pain and strength. Almost five months ago, Kaudha experienced one of the most painful and emotionally exhausting processes for pregnant women: prolonged labor followed by a stillborn delivery. Kaudha spent hours trying to deliver her third child, but the baby died and the long labor resulted in an obstetric fistula. The condition left Kaudha disempowered and depressed. She became isolated from her community, no longer able to attend church, host guests, or associate with others; Kaudha and her husband even began sleeping in separate beds. Days began to drag on for Kaudha, each one following the same routine of monotony and seclusion.

Kaudha (left) and Loy, UVP's Fistula Coordinator

At the fistula screening Kaudha had a somber strength about her. Over the course of the subsequent camp we witnessed that somberness bloom into hope and, eventually, joy. We visited with Kaudha and her husband, Kiirya Bashir, in the hours before she was taken into surgery. They wore matching shy smiles and seemed surprisingly relaxed. After talking with them it was clear that even before surgery, the camp had already begun to change their lives. This fistula camp gave Kaudha a community of women and caretakers that welcomed her and understood her situation. She and Kiirya spoke with excitement for their future, citing testimonials of successful fistula surgeries and Loy’s support as the sources of their hope. 

We returned to the camp a couple of weeks later to see how clients were recovering. Kaudha and Kiirya were full of warmth and gratitude after a successful surgery and easy recovery. They gushed about Loy’s incredible caretaking and the new life they were excited to begin after discharge.

A few weeks later we followed up with Kaudha at her home. When we reached her village, it took a moment to register that the young, animated woman laughing and waving at us was Kaudha. She was completely transformed: her somber, reserved demeanor replaced with a charismatic, youthful energy. The visit was powerful for so many reasons, but it can be best expressed through Kaudha’s own words.   

“I am so very happy.  I feel like every part of my body is okay now. In the past I would go to the banana plantation with a mat and sit there alone all day and then at night come home and sleep because I didn’t want to associate with people. I even had good clothes and wouldn’t wear them because I feared ruining them. I felt trapped. But even now I can sit anywhere and move around without fear of leaking or smelling or something happening. I go to church, I eat with my friends, I am part of the community again. I feel free.” 

14 kids from Buwoira

By Kelly Child, UVP's Managing Director. Kelly joined Uganda Village Project in June 2015.

The first few weeks in a new position are always a little scattered as you acclimate to your new duties and organizational culture. Add the bustle from receiving and placing 40 national and international interns in rural villages in Uganda and the days fly by like a whirlwind. This post was written this summer, and as we’re preparing for the next round of HIV outreaches, it seemed like a good time to revisit it.

Each intern team in villages joining the Healthy Villages program held an HIV outreach where UVP helps to coordinate supplies and health workers to provide testing, counseling, and treatment options for HIV and malaria along with immunizations for children. The first two events were great—a large community turnout and the interns had a great time mobilizing the community and executed entertaining sensitizations and answering questions like the bosses they are.

Buwoira’s HIV outreach resonated with me the most. While driving through the lush, green village, Titus, our HIV Program Manager, grabs the megaphone and starts encouraging villagers to attend the event out the car window. We arrive at the event site and it is clear the interns have been busy this morning as all the event stations are set up: registration, HIV and malaria testing, counseling area, immunization table, etc. 

As the event slowly gets started, Ainslee and Fiona, two members of the Buwoira intern team, leave the event in search of the neighborhood children, the kids who occupy, play, and giggle on the veranda of the interns’ village house. They return with 15 children in tow intending to get them all tested for malaria and immunized. We came to find out that 14 of the 15 children tested positive for malaria. At events like this, our partners supply medication for treatment of malaria along with testing kits for HIV and malaria. Because of our event in the village, all 14 kids were able to receive treatment.

Sometimes I get caught up in trying to Sometimes I get caught up in trying to learn Lusoga (Wasuze otya eyo? Bulungi!), financial spreadsheets, and sweating (a lot). I’m reminded of the importance of our work in moments like this one in Buwoira and am so grateful for this opportunity. Thank you to all of our 2015 interns! We’ll be thinking of you as we hold HIV outreach days in other Healthy Villages this month.

Coming together to stop fistula

Can you imagine 80 visits to Africa in less than 50 years? At Uganda Village Project, we have knowledgeable staff with years of public health and development experience. None of us, however, come close to 46 years of work in Uganda. That honor goes to Dr. Brian Hancock, a talented surgeon

who has been volunteering his time in Uganda helping fistula patients during 50 visits to Uganda (80 total to Africa!) over 46 years.

Not long ago, we were at Kamuli Mission Hospital to meet with everyone involved in the most recent fistula camp. We were pleased to spend time with Dr. Hancock, who graciously invited us to sit down for a cup of tea and talk more about the women who come for surgeries and how things have changed over four decades of fistula treatment. He can remember tiny details of the majority of his patients, and he talks about each one with a genuine appreciation and a sparkle in his eye. During other visits to fistula camps, I’ve been struck by the resiliency and strength of the women. This time, during our conversation with Dr. Hancock I was reminded how important it is to work together to achieve change for women with fistula. It really does take a village, and in this case, the village comes from England, Scotland, Norway, the US, and across eastern Uganda.

Loy, UVP’s Fistula Coordinator, was monitoring patients who had just come out of surgery. Nurses from Scotland were working with nurses from Uganda who had recently been trained in fistula care at another Ugandan hospital. Everyone was really impressed by their skills and excited for the potential of them taking on more duties in the future. There were doctors from the UK being assisted by Ugandan nurses in the surgical theater. When we talked with Dr. Hancock, he said it used to be just him and one nurse attending to fistula patients. Now, there are multiple people from multiple countries all dedicated to healing women.

As we sat with a Scottish nurse waiting to support the next surgery, she acknowledged that it takes a lot of energy to work at the camps, often 12 or more hours a day, in order to meet the demand for surgery. All the international doctors and nurses use their personal vacation days to come here. She deflected our appreciation, though, with a reminder that none of their work would be possible without efforts to identify women suffering from fistula and bring them for the surgery in the first place. It’s not only doctors and nurses from multiple countries who make this happen, it takes Fistula Ambassadors who share their stories with women in their communities to encourage them to come for surgery. It takes UVP staff who support the Ambassadors, organize camps, and make sure the women heal and return home safely. It takes the Fistula Foundation, who provides funding for many of these programs, and it takes donors from around the world who help us support women before and after surgery.

I'm still impressed by the resiliency of the women who come for surgery. They're the entire reason we all do this. But watching this global village come together to help the women was just as inspiring.

Return to Uganda

By Alison Schroth Hayward, UVP co-founder and Board Chair

It had been over 10 years since my first trip to Iganga, when I performed a needs assessment and co-founded Uganda Village Project, and more than five since my most recent one. The last time I walked through our gates on Moses Kintu Road, six years previously, we had just moved in. Walking into the compound felt unreal – I had returned to the office so many times in my mind’s eye, during the intervening years of volunteer work from home, that being there again felt like being present in a daydream.

Not only is the Uganda to which I arrived different from the Uganda of five years ago, now I am different too. No longer do I even consider jumping on the back of a boda boda, letting my hair fly behind us as we zip around the traffic. I stick strictly to cars for transport. There were no crazy mataatu encounters, stacked like sardines in a tin can barreling down the road with chickens at our feet. Although Entebbe is still the same small, sunny airstrip, it now has jetways, security cameras at immigration and fingerprinting machines, and functioning conveyor belts for luggage. Kampala is still a dust bowl of crowds, traffic, and mayhem, but there are traffic lights now. And Iganga is still the same sleepy, agrarian town along the highway – aside from what appears to be a newly flourishing industry in woodworking along the old Kaliro road, it all still looks the same to me as the day I left.

The trip was emotionally different for me as well. In the past, when I witnessed one of the routine tragedies of life in rural Uganda – such as seeing a five year old carrying a toddler on his or her back, far from sight of any parent – I previously just registered how foreign that sight was, then how tragic, and I would momentarily acknowledge to myself that this was something that should not happen and I kept moving. I was able to compartmentalize my horror, file it away mentally under “things that I wish were different.” Something about being a mother has changed this for me. Now, when I see that tiny child bent under the weight of their baby sibling, it carries a much deeper meaning for me. I’ve carried that weight. I know much more about exactly what that tragedy might truly entail, on a daily basis. The situation is no more sad than it always was, but now my sadness is personal, and I struggle to keep my composure and hold back the tears when I see children suffering. – or even now, just writing about it.

This feeling of intense heartsickness made it much easier to feel overwhelmed at the enormity of the need in rural Iganga. I wanted to protect my heart, I tried to push the images and feelings out of my mind because there were too many wrongs I could not right. Ironically, feeling more personally affected by these situations made me want to run further away from them, to surround myself with happier thoughts and put my head in the ground.

Then, on the last day of my stay in Iganga, Maureen arranged for some of the beneficiaries of our programs to come visit with me at the office. I once again met Josephine Nakalimo, then a very quiet and shy secondary school student, now a confident young college graduate who just registered her own nonprofit to help other vulnerable children. She explained to me that she was postponing the idea of marriage and children, because she wanted to secure a job and her financial independence first. She launched into a speech of gratitude that seemed like it had been mentally planned for quite some time. “I want to thank you so much for what you have done for me. If you were not you, then I would not be who I am today,” she repeated to me several times. “You are my mother, because you cared for me like I was your child.” Once again, I was fighting back tears, but this time they were happy ones. I was full of pride at what Josephine had accomplished and who she had become. On a personal level, the experience clarified resoundingly that it was possible to make a difference, to change lives – something I theoretically knew, but had been having trouble accepting as true.

Fighting against poverty and preventable disease in rural eastern Uganda continues to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my life. Revisiting Uganda reminded me that all the work I’ve done, all the dollars I’ve spent – these efforts have not been meaningless gestures in the face of an overwhelming tide of need. Each choice to help has meant something real to a person or a family in Iganga, even if I did not have the opportunity to meet and speak with each of them or to know their names. I returned home with a renewed commitment to improving community health in those places where the need is greatest. I wish I could have taken you with me, but I hope that through this narrative, you’ve been able to see the trip through my eyes.

Sincerely, and with many thanks for all you have done to support Uganda Village Project –

Alison Schroth Hayward