ACT Uganda Blog

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, "...

  ACT has 6 Programs and one of those is HEAL (Health is Elemental to All Life). The desired outcomes for the HEAL Program are to promote good sanitation, healthy life choices, good nutrition and education about health.  To do this, ACT trained 15 volunteers from various villages who are now volunteer Health Promotion Workers. These volunteers go into one village at a time, hold a meeting (dialogue) for as many community members as possible - men, women and children. They begin by sharing about the services available through ACT. They then share some health-related information such as sanitation ideas, good parenting skills, health domestic partnerships, and so on. The group then           1. discusses the greatest health issues in their village      2. prioritizes those issues for the most important and urgent      3. creates an Action Plan describing how they will work collaboratively to improve their    ...

  Welcome! This is the first post of the ACT Uganda Weekly Blog! We will tell stories, shares fun things and just keep you informed of the wonderful things happening in Muko, Sub County Uganda. You can help us shape these blogs by commenting about topics you want to hear more about. There are so many things to share, so let me get started! As we begin the year 2022, 16 years after ACT started, we reflect on the past couple of years. COVID hit both Muko and Michigan hard. Our two countries decided to deal with this pandemic in very different ways. There were positives and negatives both in the U.S. and Uganda. In Muko, the schools were shut down for nearly 2 years. President Museveni decide late last fall to open the schools in January. Kids were very, very ready and excited to return. We have our highest enrollment yet at Muko High School (ACT is managing the school for the time being) at 417 students. At the shutdown time we had 172 students. This is certainly something to celebra...