Saturday, October 17th 2009
Didn’t go out last night so woke up refreshed and ready to attack the day. Went out for a run along Lake Victoria – as always it was beautiful and refreshing. I didn’t notice as many “mzungu” shouts – not sure if I am noticing them less or the people are used to seeing me run through the streets every morning.
Got yogurt and milk and said hi to my unofficial girlfriend – the yogurt lady of Buziga. It’s actually pretty funny – on mornings I don’t go to pick up my yogurt and milk she asks about me. Funny to think how far we’ve come. (Only my faithful readers know how the yogurt lady treated me when I first arrived).
Afterwards I decided to stop writing and take some JOE TIME and read a bit. I am reading a book by Randy Pausch called, “The Last Lecture.” It’s a pretty cheesy book…but pseudo interesting.
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
“Randy Pausch was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pausch learned that he had a terminal case of pancreatic cancer in September 2006. He gave an upbeat lecture entitled "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video and led to other media appearances. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lecture on the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller. Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.”
Basically this guy talks about confronting death and using that as a catalyst to achieve your childhood dreams. I’m about a quarter of the way through…but it’s a good read so far.
I was interrupted in my reading by Aggie, one of the Educate! mentors, who was hosting a “Career Day” for students at a local church. She did the career day in tandem with the Kampala Sect of Rotary…which is a big deal here. There were about 80 students and the focus was helping students determine what they wanted to focus on in school + giving them vocational advice. I had to introduce myself briefly and I’ve gotten markedly better at interacting with these students. Here are my tips:
- Start with a huge smile and say, loudly, “Oli Otia Scholars?!” (They are always SO surprised when a mzungu greets them in their native tongue.)
- Smile a LOT.
- Talk slower than you could ever imagine.
Anyways, I had to leave that early because we had a meeting of our Ugandan Advisory Board at the compound at 2:00. Now…I am not the biggest fan of meetings and groupthink. I generally feel they waste a lot of time and don’t add much value. But the meeting was really phenomenal. I now fully understand why a board of advisors is so essential for the success of any organization. The diverse backgrounds and skill sets made for some interesting conversation as we tackled an array of issues for Educate:
1. Fund raising (need to fundraise $250,000 next year to keep Educate! going)
2. Succession planning (hiring new people when current people leave)
3. Teaching out of school youth (refugees, orphans, homeless children)
4. Expanding to more schools (we currently work with 24)
Here are the people that were in attendance:
Uganda Advisory Board Members
Collins Hy Tugumisirize: Collins is the founder and managing director of Afroeducare (www.studyinuganda.com). Afroeducare markets Ugandan educational institutions to East Africa and is currently collaborating with the Ministry of Education to develop a secondary school accreditation system in Uganda.
Irene Mutumba: Irene was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2005 and has been creating “Young Entrepreneur” Clubs in secondary schools across Uganda where students create and run small business projects. She is also training teachers to create a less regimented classroom and recruits volunteers from business and citizen sectors to participate in the management and growth of the clubs. Her organization is called the Private Education Development Network (pedn.org) She is a speaker for the Educate! Mentor Induction Training and a future judge for the Educate! Social Entrepreneurship Club Competition.
Martin Kisawuzi: Martin founded Busiro Community College School and has developed it into a centerpiece of the community. He is the head of credit at Centenary Rural Development Bank Ltd (www.centenarybank.co.ug).
Ben Waira: Ben is the administrative manager for MBW Consulting Engineers and is an associate governor of East Africa Rotary. Margaret Wokuri: Margaret is a columnist for the Daily Monitor and is currently on the staff at ACFODE (www.acfode.org), an organization working to promote gender equality in Uganda. In addition, Margaret serves on the board and is a founding member of Mt. Masaba High School.
Jonah Walusimbi: Jonah Walusimbi is the head teacher of Greenhill Academy (Educate! partner school and one of the most well-respected schools in Uganda). Jonah started his own shoe company at the age of 17 and notes that “I have a strong appetite for entrepreneurship.” Students at Greenhill Academy have started a recycling program under him, and sold revision note CDs (for example for the biology A level exam) to raise money for community mosquito nets. Jonah provides excellent advice and perspective on Educate!’s program as a whole and espeically the entrepreneurship aspects of the curriculum.
I spoke with Irene Mutumba after the meeting. For those of you not familiar with the “social entrepreneur” concept – being elected an Ashoka fellow is basically the highest-level award you can receive. It was incredible to actually speak with her.
I told her I wanted to create a revolving loan fund whereby we’d give our SEC (social entrepreneurship clubs) an Educate! grant (say 200,000 USH ($100 USD)) and then allow the SEC members to parse out the money as they saw fit. So…if a student came to them with a viable business they could give that student start-up capital and also charge them interest. The student would benefit from access to capital, the SEC would benefit from the interest charged to the student and the school would benefit as all borrowed funds would need to be used for projects that made a positive impact in the students respective school.
Sounds like a win-win-win situation, right?
“It’ll never work!” Irene laughed. “Not in a million years. If the students know the loan is coming from Educate! they’ll never take it seriously. You can’t have the same organization teaching the students and also making loans to them!”
Hmph.
“I guess I know a lot about business, but almost nothing about Ugandan business.”
Irene smiled.
Our conversation saved me from going down the wrong path. After speaking with Irene learned that the loan would have to come from a well-respected microfinance organization that would be able to enforce its contracts and ensure the students paid the money back.
Irene gave me some contact information for a few MFI’s in Uganda and said she’d be happy to sit down and have a one-on-one meeting to discuss Educates! funding model. Woo hoo!
Afterwards I spoke with Martin Kisawuzi, and wow, what an incredible story this guy is – a real “rags to riches” fellow. After high school his father told him he was on his own. He had gotten into an excellent university and was set to study quantum Economics (yeah, I have no idea what that means but it sounds pretty tough) but he didn’t have enough money to go to school and his parents wouldn’t give him a cent. So he deferred entering the university for a year and worked for a year to pay for school fees. He went to his first year of school and did excellent. But when it came to second term fees again he didn’t have enough money. He applied for and was granted another extension. He got an odd job hauling sand from Lake Victoria up to Jinja. He had to drive rickety old trucks that broke down all the time. When they’d break down, or when a tire would burst it was Martin’s responsibility to fix it. Often time that included sending someone for a part and staying with the vehicle so the contents of the truck weren’t stolen. He stayed in trucks overnight, for days, for multiple days and nights, in mosquito riddled sections of Uganda…everything…just so he could pay school fees.
After working for a year hauling sand from Lake Victoria Martin had enough money to pay for another year. He went to school again and did well.
Year three popped up and again he didn’t have school fees. This time Martin didn’t want to drop out from school and so he asked his mother if he could use her house as collateral for a student loan. His mother said yes. He borrowed against his mothers’s house and paid interest on the loan by teaching night class. He did that during his last year and a year after college. He finally finished going to and paying for college after 5 years.
Then he got a job at Centenary Bank as their chief credit officer. After saving his money for a few years he bought a plot of land in Busiro. With each paycheck he contributed more and more to this plot of land. When it was finally big enough he opened up Busiro Secondary School to serve the very underprivileged children of Busiro.
I asked him why he went through so much to open up a secondary school for people he didn’t even know.
“I don’t want education to be has hard for other people as it was for me.”
Hmm. What an incredible guy.
“So what do you think of Busiro?” He asked me. “I hear there are some problems with the students.”
I went the politically correct route, “Well, yes there are a few problems but there are also a lot of really great students.”
I went on the describe my meeting with the Busiro SEC on the prior Thutrsday. I told him that the SEC president, Benson, was really outstanding and the exact type of student Educate! was looking to empower.
“Yes, that’s good.” Martin said. “But tell me about the problems. I want to hear about the problems.”
“Well its more like one problem.” I said. “There’s one student who’s really been a thorn in our side. He’s uncooperative. He’s disruptive. He doesn’t want to be in class and im starting to think maybe its time we let him drop from the Educate! curriculum.”
“What is his name?”
“Ronald.”
“He’s my brother.”
GULP.
Martin explained to me that his youngest brother goes to Busiro. Fortunately for me he already knew that Ronald was problematic…but sheesh…talk about awkward.
The meeting with the Uganda Board of Advisors went until 6:00. The girls left to go out to dinner at a friends. I hung around the compound and relaxed by myself.
At around 9:00 I was getting ready to meet up with the girls when they asked me if I could stay around the compound until Morgan showed up.
Apparently this guy Morgan was coming from Rwanda to see John McDermott and also inquire about employment opportunities within Educate! in between the end of his internship in Rwanda and the beginning of his internship in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But this guy was like a ghost. We’d heard he might have gotten onto a bus. Heard the bus might be 12 hours long. Heard he’d probably take a boda boda to Buziga once he got here.
Anyways – he finally showed up at the gate.
I showed him to one of the empty bunk beds in my room. I tried to assemble the mosquito net for him.
“I don’t do mosquito nets.” He smiled.
Okay.
“Well, I’m sure you want to get to sleep after such a long trip.”
“Sleep?” He said. “I need a few beers.”
“Lets go!”
Me and Morgan and Becky and Winnie and Baati drove to Iguana’s.
I didn’t get to speak with Morgan that night, but I did the next day. He’s one of the craziest, most daring, most unique people I’ve ever met in my life. Oh yeah, and he’s got a kind heart too. He’s in Africa working with groups that are trying to reform children soldiers. Not an easy task. Wait till you hear more about this guy. I swear there are no boring people in Africa…the dude is literally like someone you’d see in a movie.
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