School now has a whole new meaning for me. School has always been something that everyone I know has experienced. I have a new appreciation for it now that I’ve seen a child who has never been able to attend school before, finally be able to go. Today I had the privilege of taking a boy, who is deaf, to school for the first time.
While working for CARITAS For Children in Uganda, I'll be tutoring a group of students from St. Alphonsus, a primary day school here in Nkokonjeru. Just in time for the beginning of Term Two, the other interns and I are rested, adjusted to the time change and the new environment and eager to get to work. I have a group of eleven students from Primary Three class, six boys and five girls. Three girls in my group attend St. Alphonsus through CARITAS’ child sponsorship programs.
One train, one subway ride, three planes, and a car ride through rush hour traffic and I had finally made it to Nkokonjeru. When Joseph, Technical Coordinator for CARITAS’ Uganda child sponsorship programs, stopped the car, he said one word, "home".
I made it! It’s the third day of my summer internship in Uganda and so far, I’ve realized that it is a beautiful place with a lot of contrasts from America. Immediately after arrival I couldn’t help but notice some major cultural differences.
This is the first post from one of our newest interns, Tang Yang, a university student working for CARITAS For Children’s Uganda child sponsorship programs for her summer semester.
It is currently 4 a.m. in Nkokonjeru, Uganda. I'm laying here exhausted from the 30-plus hours it took to get here but I can't fall asleep. I can't say much about Uganda right now since it is barely day one here. However, I do want to write about what I've experienced so far in the past 10 hours.
James loves animals. Since he was a little boy he had dreams of working in the veterinary field. His favorite animal is the pig. Unfortunately when it came time to take the state leaving exams to move on to university studies, James did not score high enough to move on.
Farron Horton spent a week in Haiti during the Easter week to familiarize herself with CARITAS For Children's Haitian child sponsorship programs in anticipation of working there full-time beginning the summer of 2016.
Haiti, Haiti, Haiti. It is definitely a unique Caribbean country compared to all the others. However, I'm not really sure of the ways it's unique to me. All I know is that each time I am there, I automatically get a sense that I am home.
CARITAS For Children makes a difference for hundreds of children worldwide, yet its founder Christopher T. Hoar, still enjoys the opportunity to check in with some of the young people growing up within its child sponsorship programs.
Chris recently skyped with one of those young people, Immaculate, "a very early Caritas child". Newly graduated from high school, she discussed with him her desire to attend Saint Francis Nsambya Nursing School. He asked her for "a story of her experience", which follows in her own words.
“The key thing is to develop the people. You have to have people with a twelfth grade education who are going to be responsible voters, who are going to understand the issues and keep moving the democratic process forward,” said Dr. Paul Brodwin of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Department of Anthropology and The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) based there.
Topics: Haiti
How did Haiti become the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere? There are deep historical reasons for that according to Dr. Paul Brodwin of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Department of Anthropology and The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) based there.
Brodwin provided insight into Haiti’s foundations, its long-term struggles, and barriers to progress in a recent conversation with CARITAS For Children, which has operated child sponsorship programs there since 2010.
