Uganda Leadership Development Program

Our destination today is Uganda Christian University. We are going to spend the day with young men and women in the Leadership Development Program of Compassion International. A lot of these young adults were children in the child sponsorship program. They are now literally going from poverty and destitution as children to training at the university to be leaders in their country.

We start our visit with the church service on campus. The auditorium is open on the sides and the back and packed with people spilling outside. It’s an Anglican church with extra lively music. There is no doubt that we are at a worship service in Africa. During a song or special moment, the women might let out a tribal yell, the high pitched “hi-yi-yi-yi.” During one song, three of the men do some wonderful dancing that definitly has origins from long ago. The service lasts two hours and fifteen minutes.







We then move to a hall to hear about the work here. Three of the students in the program by the names of Innocent, James, and Memory give very moving testimonies about their lives. One is the youngest of a family of eight children who lost both parents by the time he was six, left to be raised by siblings. The others have similar stories. We are struck by their incredible positive attitude, hope, and gratefulness for what their sponsors and Compassion International did and do for them. They speak especially glowingly about what the letters and encouragement from their sponsors meant to them. It’s at that point that it hits home that their sponsor’s letters were not additional encouragement in their lives, like a family friend adding to a family's encouragement to a child. For some, they were the only encouragement. Many hold on to their letters as precious keepsakes. We’re struck even moreso that their personal hope is to go back to help their communities and other children.

Melissa and Memory walking in front of the banana trees:


Memory, Innocent, Melissa, and James:


Me and memory:


Two other realizations that have come from our visit here:

One of our group was told during a home visit, “This may be just another day for you, but for us this day will be entered into our history.” Wow. That tells us a lot about what our visit means to the people we have come to see.

Melissa, in one of her home visits, was brought to light on what her sponsorship means here. A lot of people think that their sponsorship just helps kids get from day to day and survive. The mother of one of the sponsored children shared that through this sponsorship they are counting on it to raise these children up to transform their country. Wow again, and humbling. Melissa shared, “They hope for more than I do.” It’s hard to achieve more than you hope for. There is an incredible amount of hope in the people of Uganda. They can realize their dreams.

You can be a part of this, right now. Visit www.compassion.com.