Why We Are Needed
The children of Uganda are suffering. The AIDS pandemic and the conflict in the North have devastated whole regions of Uganda, amplifying poverty and despair. 1.9 million orphans have seen their parents die of AIDS, one million children live in IDP camps, and tens of thousands were abducted by rebels and forced to become child soldiers and sex slaves.
The Stephen Shames Foundation partners with Concern for the Future, a leadership program focusing on marginalized youth whose human rights do not exist in any real sense. The children we serve have been discarded. They are child soldiers, youth from IDP camps, AIDS orphans, sex slaves, child laborers, street kids. They live in child-headed families. Our students have seen their parents hacked to death. They watched their guardians waste away and die from AIDS. They are unable to attend school. They eat sporadically.
We Train the Next Generation of Leaders
We empower these children. Under our care these deserving youngsters acquire “world-class” skills, as well as the confidence to lead their communities. We give a strong voice to those whose dreams and aspirations are seldom heard.
Training discarded young people to be leaders is an effective way to promote justice and reconciliation. Healing traumatized children and reintegrating them into their communities makes the community stronger. Educating leaders expands the human capital of northern Uganda. Our students will become lawyers, judges, doctors, business owners, government administrators, journalists, artists, and aid givers. Our marginalized youth will help rebuild northern Uganda. They will help set up structures that protect human rights, create economic opportunity, and empower the disadvantaged.
Education:
The Best Way to End Poverty
Educating leaders lifts people out of poverty. In the United States, education is the highway to success for millions of immigrants. An educated technological elite is guiding India to superpower status. If CFTF’s style of excellent educational assistance were available to more youngsters, East Africa could follow in India’s footsteps.
Educating leaders in sub-Saharan Africa is especially important because the AIDS pandemic has devastated the educated and managerial classes, including teachers, civil servants, and army commanders. Insecurity in northern Uganda has affected two generations. If we do not educate talented young orphans, if we ignore the brightest child soldiers, a nucleus of new administrators will not emerge, making it difficult to address issues like justice, reintegration, poverty, and hunger.
Our Unique Contribution
Our unique contribution is creating a leadership program for discarded children unequaled anywhere in the world.
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. But it is trapped there because they lack the means to reach their potential. Tomorrow’s saviors are wasting away in IDP camps, sleeping on the street, working in rock quarries to feed younger siblings. We see them as a valuable resource, but only if they can get to school and develop their minds.
The education and cultivation of young leaders is a crucial but often overlooked component of our efforts to alleviate poverty and create a safer planet. Concern for the Future offers an innovative policy solution to the issue of child soldiers, child abductees, refugee children, and AIDS orphans. We formed a leadership program because the leadership of northern Uganda has been decimated by war and AIDS. We train leaders so that Uganda can determine its own destiny, develop economically, and heal.
Our unique contribution is seeing that, if we do not devote special attention to training local leaders and innovators, we will fall short. Even where aid addresses significant issues, it remains inadequate in the long term if it fosters dependence. Bono, Bill Clinton, and Bill Gates have made enormous contributions with debt relief and vaccinations. But if Africans are not equal partners in these endeavors, the continent will emain in a neocolonial situation, relying for its survival on the good deeds of others. Who is going to feed all the people being kept alive by vaccinations? Who is going to ensure that debt relief brings better governance? Who is going to make the next breakthrough in AIDS research?
Outsiders cannot make Africa independent. Nor can they create institutions that will provide justice and prosperity. Only indigenous leaders can accomplish that. If East Africa is to transcend the legacy of colonialism and climb out of the morass of AIDS and war, the cultivation of a new generation of home-grown leaders must begin today.
What better place to start than by educating today’s most promising orphans and child soldiers? Why not give them the skills to steer Africa into the 21st century? Thus far, the digital age has benefited countries such as India that made a concerted effort to train leaders and harness their energies. What keeps Africa from emulating India’s success is not brain power: According to Vanity Fair (July, 2007), “African college students [in the U.S.] are doing exceptionally well….In 2000, Africans averaged the highest educational attainments of any group in the United States – higher even than whites and Asians.”
The problem is lack of opportunity for millions of children living in poverty. The issue is a lack of funding for programs dedicated to finding and cultivating leaders among the dispossessed. Concern for the Future is a model of what can be done. Our students are recognized leaders. New Vision, Uganda’s largest newspaper, named the best student at each of Uganda’s top eleven secondary schools. Two of the scholars mentioned, students from the top two schools in Uganda, are Concern for the Future members.
The leaders Africa desperately needs can be found among the groups most affected by crisis. If these talented young people are nurtured, if they are given world-class skills, they will lead their compatriots, their tribes, their countries, and their continent to a brighter future. That is our vision, our unique contribution.
We Complement The Millennium Goals
The United Nations’ Millennium Goals seek to eliminate poverty in our lifetime. Universal primary education is one of their objectives. The Ugandan government exceeds the Millennium Goals by offering its citizens universal primary and secondary education. This is a giant step forward. However, putting millions of children into substandard, overcrowded schools will not lead to the tipping point needed to jump-start Uganda’s economy or allow East African nations to benefit from globalization. These primary and secondary school graduates will still lack the skills necessary to participate in the global, computer-based economy. That is why Concern for the Future’s leadership program is needed. Our holistic approach to creating leaders complements the Millennium Goals and the educational accomplishments of Uganda’s government.
Our Model Is Visionary
Concern for the Future, an education and leadership program in Uganda funded by the Stephen Shames Foundation, is no ordinary program. Our plan provides a vision, a road map to how we can alleviate poverty and create a safer world.
We transform children’s lives. Concern for the Future is an intense, leadership building program. We locate excluded youngsters — child soldiers, AIDS orphans, children working in rock quarries, kids in refugee camps, young people in child-headed families, and street kids. We enroll them in the top schools, help them climb to the top of their class, and propel them to university.
Concern for the Future creates innovative, “world-class” leaders.
Our dedicated young people will help Africa achieve democracy, prosperity, and stability.
Please support the Stephen Shames Foundation and Concern for the Future so that our 76 youngsters can realize their goals.
Donate
LEAD Uganda has two premium contribution levels: Sponsor and Patron.
Sponsors and Patrons receive a photo, letters from
their student, and progress reports from us.
Sponsors pay all costs for one child — $150 a month.
$150 a month — $5 a day pays for
everything a child needs to succeed: school fees, books, clothes, medical care, workshops in math, science, computers, and leadership, emotional support, counseling, and a family.
Sponsors are assigned a student. They receive monthly letters from their student, and progress reports from us. They may also receive photographs, drawings, and other materials.
Patrons donate $50 or $100 a month.
$100 a month – $3 a day - pays school fees (tuition), plus room, and board, books, and uniform at one of the best high schools in Uganda.
$50 a month – $1.50 a day – covers school fees for one scholar at a top school.
Patrons receive letters from students and progress reports from us. They are not assigned one student.
Please give what you can. Every donation helps.
$25 a month covers workshops in leadership, video, science, and writing, transportation home during school breaks, school visits, and staff support for one student.
$10 a month buys school supplies. clothes, shoes for one child.
$5 a month provides medical care and books for one student.
Please help a child achieve his or her dreams.
All contributions make a difference.
LEAD Uganda is a 501(c)3 non-profit.
Donations are tax deductible.
Newsletter Editor: Stephen Shames
Photography © 2007, Stephen Shames / Polaris Images
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