Let’s Create Real Change for Africa

Posted May 21, 2010

I have been involved in children’s issues for over 40 years as a photojournalist and later as an advocate. Always at the top of my mind is: What do poor children need? How do you help those who are most at risk – the former child soldiers, AIDS orphans, child heads of households, working children, […]

Young girl who was abducted by LRA rebels carries drinking water at a rehabilitation center for former child soldiers and abducted children.

What I learned documenting child poverty for my book Outside the Dream; what I learned during the three years I researched poverty alleviation for The Ford Foundation; what I found out as an activist in the U. S. and Uganda is that the best way to help children is to help their families. Since you can’t help families without addressing the larger issues within their communities, we must also promote social change – do things which will help the community in a sustainable way.

Let’s create real change. To do that we must transform their lives – not just sustain them in their misery. What is the point of raising children from starvation to abject poverty? Let’s put children into a position where they can help their communities. In the 1970s, I saw the Black Panther Party turn alienated young men and women into leaders who served their communities. In the 1990s, I watched Friends of the Children transform abused and neglected children’s lives by inserting a caring “aunt” or “uncle” into their lives. In 2010, L.E.A.D Uganda (www.leaduganda.org) is turning AIDS orphans, former child soldiers, and child laborers into agents of change.

And it just so happens transformation is what the HIV-positive Ugandan women I met in 2000 while doing a story on AIDS had in mind. The Ugandans were dissatisfied with the dependency created by much of the aid from the West. It didn’t change their situations. They felt it kept colonialism alive. They told me they did not just want to receive a chicken from someone. They wanted their children to have the skills that they didn’t have. Working with them, I decided to take a different approach. We would give excluded youngsters 21st-century leadership skills.

We formed L.E.A.D Uganda, an educational leadership initiative for children affected by AIDS, war, and poverty. We LOCATE the best and brightest children living on the edges of society and mold them into leaders. We EDUCATE our orphans in the very best schools and furnish them with everything they need to succeed, including a loving family environment which helps heal their traumas. Our scholars ACHIEVE academic excellence; they receive scholarships to top universities in Uganda, India, and the United States. Our children DREAM of becoming the entrepreneurs, teachers, doctors who will lead Africa into the 21st century.

Our distinctive, original vision is seeing that the solution to Africa’s problems exists in the hearts and minds of the current generation of neglected and excluded children: child soldiers, youth from internally displaced persons camps, AIDS orphans, sex slaves, child laborers, street kids, child-headed families. Our students saw their parents hacked to death. They witnessed their guardians waste away and die from AIDS. They are unable to attend school. They eat sporadically. They are invisible. Their fundamental human rights are an abstract concept.

Two girls sleep outside at Lacor Hospital. 6 to 8,000 night commuters walk miles each day to sleep in the center of town so they will not be abducted.

The first children we helped were five orphans I met at the funeral of their mother, who had died of AIDS. I formed a special relationship with the youngest, a baby named Sarah, who now calls me “Dad” and her sister Sanyu, who at ten became head of the house. Sanyu relates, “We didn’t have money to buy food. It is horrible to go to school on an empty stomach… I (was) like a mother, looking after my sister and brother…stuck in the village fetching water, digging for food, and collecting firewood..”

Today, the lives of ninety children, including Sarah, now 11, and Sanyu, now 15, have been transformed. Other students whose lives have been transformed include:

• Madina, who was told she would have to quit school at the end of 6th grade and get married.

• Kimbowa: “I had to earn money to pay for school fees, books and clothes. I made envelopes; I cut, folded and glued them….I sold 300 a day for 77¢. It wasn’t enough. ‘You have to earn more money and not go to school,’ my mother said. But, more than anything I wanted to study.”

• Former child soldier Ongom, who attended primary school in Pader IDP camp: “I sat on the floor with 52 other students. The school had no books, desks, or chalkboard. We went to school at ten o’clock with soldiers escorting us…..children can’t study because they fear being abducted by the rebels at school.”

Madina, Kimbowa, and Ongom now attend top high schools and will go to university.

L.E.A.D Uganda is independent. It is run by a Ugandan board and a local staff of five dedicated individuals from the community. They built a family, a clan for our traumatized orphans, so they can heal. We formed a clan because our children had lost their clans and the clan is the glue of African society. There are no victims in L.E.A.D Uganda. Our kids don’t think they are orphans. They are part of a strong, vibrant family with 90 siblings and aunts and uncles on two continents. Our scholars aspire to lead their communities; to help other poor, traumatized children.

We’ve built a culture of success. I remember the first time I told the kids we are going to put them into the top boarding schools. They did not believe me. These are kids who were used all kinds of inflated promises that didn’t come to fruition. They felt they would have more chance of landing on the moon than sitting next to the children of cabinet ministers. But we kept our promise. You could hear a pin drop when we announced to the assembled kids a few weeks later that five of our students had gotten into the best primary school in Uganda – a school that had the children of the Italian Ambassador and offspring of top government officials. That was a turning point, the day we became a family.

We give our student-members a high level of support and instill them with self confidence so they see themselves as leaders. They take it from there. This past January, we took in a dozen new primary school students. Sanyu

Primary school classroom in Pader IDP Camp. More than 100 students pack this small room.

saw that they were shy. She enlisted the help of other teens and ran a public speaking workshop for them. Our students are transforming their lives and achieving great things:

UNICEF interviewed Sanyu, who was orphaned by AIDS, and Nokrach, 16, a former child soldier, at the United Nations recently. When asked what she thought would have happened if she hadn’t become involved with L.E.A.D. Uganda, Sanyu says thoughtfully, “I don’t know. Maybe I’d be dead.”

Nokrach says he was only 7 years old when rebel soldiers abducted him and forced him to fight in Uganda’s civil war. After fleeing the conflict, Nokrach also became involved with L.E.A.D Uganda, and is now attending school, which he says has improved his confidence. “I can lead my friends and lead the country maybe one day and I think I (now) have the courage and leadership skills… I believe I can make it,” he says.

Sanyu says education cannot be taken for granted. “Education… is to do with the future and that’s how you can achieve your dreams and your goals,” Sanyu says. “I aspire to be a doctor… I want to fight AIDS that takes the life of many in my country”.

“I am the happiest man on the planet,” remarks an excited Katongole, “From a quarry boy to a pharmacist! It’s unbelievable, but now it’s true. I think now that nothing is impossible.”

When he graduates from university in four years, where he received a full government scholarship, this former quarry boy – who broke rocks into pebbles for 73¢ a day, will be able to help his country which suffers from a shortage of professionals in the field of pharmacy.

“Pharmacy is more than just counting pills. The pharmacist’s role in society is to promote the well-being of their patients. It is a trustworthy occupation that reaches into almost all aspects of medicine and health care. I am indeed happy to reach this point in life, because now I am looked at importantly by my nation and by my family.”

“I think I was created for a time as this,” says Bayona, who also received a full government sponsorship to university, “because society needs people who add value, people who contribute to its well-being. With my degree in business statistics, I will be capable and I will be more than ready to help Uganda face the challenges of this age and beyond.”

Bayona will join a privileged few women students who will be able to the acquire professional management skills so vital to Uganda’s well being.

Ntege, a former child rock quarry worker who was accepted by three universities in the United States this fall sums things up, “Truly, I assure you that all these former child soldiers, HIV/AIDS orphans, ex-rebels, as well as former child workers like myself, who now attend schools in Uganda as well as outside Uganda, have dreams of eradicating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Uganda, being top government anti-corruption officials…. Education is the only key to achieving our goals. Without it, we won’t be able to become the successful leaders that everyone expects us to be in future.”

L.E.A.D Uganda is a unique, cost-effective approach that has huge potential to change millions of lives. Our model is the not the only one, but it is very effective. The United Nations says education is the #1 poverty alleviator. The GI bill of rights transformed the American middle class and helped make us the most prosperous nation on earth. Education – especially in the IT field – has allowed India to become a superpower. Africa can achieve this also. Africans are the best-performing college students in the US. Their ability is there, what is lacking is opportunity. Everyone says “teach a man to fish”, yet not enough programs do this. Most give people fish so they survive, but do not prosper.

We believe that giving young people the 21st-century leadership skills they need to function in a complex world is the best way to alleviate poverty, create stability, peace and prosperity. Education at excellent schools is a way to really help third world children – and their communities.

I see evidence that there is a trend towards this. Educate! (Uganda) and the African Leadership Academy (South Africa) are two examples of programs like ours. L.E.A.D Uganda’s approach is the wave of the future. Let’s join together and spread this new way of working. We might just change the world.

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Stephen Shames creates award-winning photo essays on social issues for foundations, advocacy organizations, the media, and museums. Steve is author of four monographs: Outside the Dream, Pursuing the Dream, and The Black Panthers(Aperture), and Transforming Lives (Star Bright Books). Shames wrote and directed two videos: Friends of the Children and Children of Northern Uganda. Steve started L.E.A.D. Uganda which locates forgotten children (AIDS orphans, former child soldiers, and children living in refugee camps) with innate talents and molds them into leaders by sending them to the best schools and colleges.