FROM THE FIELD- A student Intern report from Uganda

Please don’t EVER make me come home I love Uganda ! The weather right now feels EXACTLY like Texas during the summers—very humid (maybe even a little bit more), very hot around the middle of the day.
This week I met the Reach the Children staff and now come in to the office every day.  RTC finds representatives from communities & villages—both parents and respected leaders—and trains them to be “torchbearers” and “parentheads” who teach the Stay Alive curriculum in schools and mobilize communities. It’s a huge network—RTC works with numerous districts, which each have several sub-counties. Each sub-county is comprised of parishes. Each parish contains about 8 villages. And there can be anywhere from 5-20 schools per village. So quite a large distance to cover. RTC also works with local agricultural, health and government officials. The programs RTC implements can be summarized into 4 major groups: Microfinance/Development, Childcare/Orphan support, Humanitarian/Volunteer Expeditions, and Health Programs which cover HIV, Malaria, TB & Sanitation. They have a program manager over each of those programs with several project officers assigned to each which handle things from accounts to monitoring/evaluation to expeditions and community development. While I was only focusing on RTC’s Stay Alive program, I’ve quickly learned that everything is interconnected.

First they begin teaching the HIV prevention lessons in school and identify vulnerable children—either because they are orphaned, disabled (physically or mentally), or nutritionally compromised. Rescue missions come first—providing some food, seeds and humanitarian aid. Then RTC starts in on educating communities about children’s rights (to education especially), more efficient farming practices, microfinance, maturation sensitivity in regards to girls attending schools, etc. They have their hand in everything. RTC teaches/trains the torchbearers who then implement all these programs in their communities.

Jane Eyre- BYU Student Intern/May 2010