Our recent Uganda trip was a story of beauty, collaboration, joy, and new beginnings. We were so thrilled to bring 5 student interns From BIOLA university studying Public Health with us! Each student added value and new perspectives to our developing local partnerships. From spontaneous dance moments, to sitting and listening to the cares of the people, our interns shined. There were several highlights from our trip, but here’s a few.
We were invited on to Uganda Christian Univerity’s campus to meet with the Vice Chancellor and hear about their public health program. UGCU is a beautiful campus and is incredibly weaved in to the health care system of Uganda. This school is a training ground for some of the brightest professionals in Uganda.
We were honored to speak at their chapel and be invited to explore deeper partnership with their global health work. For Meeting TENTS, working through “on the ground” leaders is important to us. It’s an honor to have university collaboration to conduct research and be a global team working together on improving health outcomes.
We were able to spend time with our current Fellows in Uganda. Joanna is spearheading a women’s hygiene project in her community. In Uganda, period poverty accounts for a 28% increase in absenteeism in school-aged girls.
Girls should not have to suffer from this and miss school due to lack of resources. Joanna, has her heart set on changing this statistic! She is working within schools to teach girls about basic health, supply them with the resources they need, and reduce stigma as they ask questions. We partnered with a US based elementary school to help bring hygiene supplies over for these girls. Our student interns are working closely with Joana on community needs assessments and conducting research so that the impact she's making will be even greater!
Daniel (another fellow) and his wife Susan operate a primary school and church in their village. MT was able to assist this community in providing a water tank. Clean water is essential for a healthy community. Did you know, 1 in 4 people around the the world still don’t have simple access to clean water (that’s about 2 BILLION people!). Each year, nearly 1.2 million people die because they have to drink unsafe water that causes diarrheal disease, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, polio, harmful chemical exposure, and more.
Those are preventable and unnecessary deaths. Being able to see the children at this school have clean water was one step forward in the right direction. We were so honored to sit in this community and watch the children dance and sing. We loved the special meal that they prepared for us. Local community members were able to share with us some of the health burdens that they are facing and we listened and learned.
For all of us, this trip gave us new focus and determination to keep going and do what we can to assist our friends in Uganda as we work towards improving community health together.
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