Cultural Sharing

 As part of the ACT US Strategic Plan, we have made a commitment to do cultural sharing with our Ugandan partners so that we can learn more about each other's lives and cultures. This last trip the Travel Team decide to hold a typical American baby shower since 7 of our staff had babies since before COVID and our last visit!

We included the typical components: a cake (which Karen and Sue baked in a pizza oven behind our hotel at 7,000 elevation. It required math which Dick helped us with!), snack food, decorations, gifts of each of the children and of course those dumb shower games! 

Our ACT US Board all donated toward the baby gifts and Suzanne Greenberg purchased around 3 items of clothing for each child. One of the games played were Guess How Many M&Ms are in the baby bottle. Diana Stubig ran the games and did a presentation of prizes to the winners and Dick Dolinski even gave a short presentation about early childhood development. We then served the cake and were curious to see if they would like our style of cake which is quite different from their cake. Onesmas and Guma turned out to be the biggest fans!

Towards the end of the shower, the staff began to share the courtship process and marriage process in Uganda. The stories of how they met and dated and got family blessings were priceless. What wonderful we have leading our ACT Programs!






Remember, you can sign up to receive this blog every Friday automatically in your email. Please sign up (even if you did several months ago because it is a new program) in the upper left hand corner of this blog. You will see three horizontal lines, click on those and enter your email!



Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 5, 2022 at 4:15 AM

    This was so wonderful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LynnNovember 28, 2022 at 1:03 PM

    Such a great way to promote cultural exchange and learnings--and fun! What a great-looking cake!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Treasure Name Lovina

Image
 In 2008, the US Travel Team and the ACT Staff established a program, which at the time was named Muko Empowerment Program. This program was created for the purpose of providing a market for local women with HIV to sell their baskets and beaded jewelry. There were about 25 women in the beginning all very eager to participate to earn cash to be able to send their children to school.  2008  Guma with MEP Weavers 2008 With Guma (Alexander Gumoshabe) leading the MEP Program, it grew and grew. We have carried thousands of baskets, jewelry and sewn items back in our suitcases for 20 years! Soon after we began the program, we learned of Lovina! Lovina was clearly the standout best basket weaver in our program. Lovina is lame, unable to use her legs except to walk in a squat position. She is such a strong woman. Her lack of able-ness does not even slow her down. We soon gave her the title of Basket Quality Manager and her responsibility was to come to the ACT Resource Center once...
Read more
Image
Hello Everyone! To those in the US - Happy Spring, the snow is melting and March Madness is almost over (Kansas Jayhawks are still in it as I write this!) To those in Uganda - Happy back to school finally after such a long shut down for COVID. Today I am reflecting on the beginnings of ACT. The very first contact as most of you know was a handwritten letter from Richard and Generous Turinawe - written on April 22, 2003. I had no idea of who they were and in fact, I had to look up where Uganda was in the continent of Africa! I'll bet some of you don't know I still have that original letter. Here it is! I looked at that letter on my desk for a couple of weeks and my heart stirred! I wrote Richard back and the rest is history. The first trip was September 2006 when John and I traveled there. The second trip was the first Travel Team in 2008. As of now, we've made 15 team trips to Muko and just scheduled our 16th for August 2022. So, I always hesitate when people ask me, "...
Read more

ACT's Sustainable Future

Image
How can we make ACT more self-sustainable? That was the question that led the ACT US Board to charter the FUNDS (Financial Ugandan Needs for Development & Sustainability) Task Force in early 2020 to research and propose new models of sustainability for ACT, for both programs in Uganda and ACT US.  FUNDS Task Force members include (from Muko, Uganda) Alexander "Guma" Gumoshabe, Generous Turinawe, Onesmas Arinda, Ken Blickenstaff (Indianapolis), and from Midland: Bill Busch, Kelly Busse, Gail Hoffman, Mark Maxwell, Roger Moll, Dave Molzahn, Lynn Pottenger and Sue Waechter (Traverse City).  The Task Force brainstormed possible social businesses that could be run in Uganda to provide ongoing revenue to support the ACT Uganda programs. There are many business models for a social business (also known as venture philanthropy), but generally it is a non-dividend company dedicated to solving human problems. In our case, the goal would be to raise money for ACT programs, with seco...
Read more