How I got involved:
As the product of my parents who have always been involved in community outreach, so have I. When I was about three years old, my mom and a woman named Theresa Weinman were in the PTA together.Theresa worked at Albany Med, and part of her job was to make sure that all of the med students there do community outreach and practice medicine under different conditions or with limited access to equipment (sometimes local, and sometimes internationally). Dr. Bob Paeglow (also at Albany Med) started missions where they would take 10 or so med students at a time to Dgeye village, Uganda.
On one of these missions they found out about a little girl named Susan. Susan had been badly burned in a fire when she was 5, and had been living for years on the floor of a hut with open 3-degree burns. John Kahlule, head of the clinic in Ddegeya village, and a highly respected man in their village, brought her to the attention of the Albany Med staff. Theresa got Boston Children’s hospital to pay for both her flight over here, and for her surgery. She was here for 6 months recovering, at age 9.
I got to meet her.
How I REALLY got involved:
Susan had never been to school before, as her physical condition did not allow it. About 10 families here who had been in contact with Theresa, volunteered to pay a share of Susan’s tuition for her to go to school back in Uganda. With the help of Theresa and Elaine Hickey, the program spread rapidly to supporting about 50 students to go to school. With this network in place, John Kahlule started Engeye Scholars through his clinic. Families here would support students to go to schools in Uganda. All of those chosen were from the area surrounding the clinic. They have since decided to not only send kids to schools, but to make schools better in general, by building teacher housing, libraries, solar panels, and more as well.
My visit to Uganda:
In the summer of 2015 my family was given the opportunity to stay at the Clinic in Ddegeya village.
Apart from just playing with the kids from the village, we visited several of the schools in which students were being sponsored to go to. All of the kids WANTED to be there. I had forgotten how much of a gift education really was. When sitting in upstate New York, I had never had the opportunity to put faces to names. I didn’t know which schools the kids were studying in. I merely knew I was “helping” as many kids as possible to get an education. My pride diminished when I got there. At one such school, St. Gertrude’s, I was shocked at what stood before me. There were 162 students on the roster and only 98 were present that day. The rest had been sent home, unable to pay their equivalent of $10 tuition. That’s 2 starbucks drinks. Or one move ticket. The fact that I can even equate a child’s education to these things makes me feel sick to my stomach. There were only 2 teachers in sight. The classrooms were falling apart. The girls only recently had been upgraded to matresses, where they previously slept on a concrete floor.
What did I do with this experience?:
With the permission of the school administrator, I took pictures of the teacher housing, the classrooms, the students, the pigsties in the back, the dilapidated latrine coverings. I wrote down numbers on teacher salaries, and students. When I came back I presented the information to the Theresa and the group of people involved in the Engeye Scholars program. We worked with John, and managed to get St. Gertrude’s a $5,000 grant in order to rebuild parts of the school and pay teachers so that they would actually want to work there. The school was also going to be switched out of the hands of its current owner, and into the hands of the clinic. Although this switched has been stalled, the buildings have been put up and solar panels cover the rooftops. It's still a work in progress.
