Investment in people is the best ans wisest investment for the future. This is a universal axiom particularly in developing nations such as Uganda. For the past 15 years, High Hope International has been investing in young people who have been orphaned and left in pathetic situations in Fort Portal and Kabarole.
However, many of us, especially from remote and rural areas, never used to have a chance to explore our capabilities and fulfil our potential because our families were too poor to send us to secondary school and other institutions of higher learning or other career-based training schools.
Each year, High Hope provides orphaned and poor young people in Toro Kingdom with an education from elementary school through university level. This small investment creates a large turnaround in the young person’s life and creates a positive impact on all of those around such a person.
Several of the youth sponsored by High Hope International Foundation have graduated from university and are emerging leaders in their communities. High Hope was established by the Rev Samuel Murangi Akiiki in Kanyandahi village, Ruteete subcounty, Kabarole District in Toro Kingdom. Murangi operates from Philadelphia, USA.
The programme sponsors some of the poorest youth who have lost their parents and other relatives in their extended families. Without High Hope’s help, most young boys and girls would be destined to a life of despair and without formal education. Like its appropriate name, High Hope offers hope to such people by paying school expenses, including tuition and other fees, books and school supplies and uniforms.
Occasionally, aid, including food for the family, medical care and self-help programmes for the caregiver are tailored to meet each beneficiary’s circumstances. To date, some 200 children have gone through the programme. None of these would have been able to attend school before the Government introduced free primary and secondary education.
On January 22, 2009 three of us whose education has been sponsored by High Hope and the Rev Murangi’s personal income, graduated from Makerere University and the fourth, Vicent Mugisa received his degree from Uganda Christian University Mukono on February 19. Each of us has the intellect, academic skills and personal character to serve as constructive leaders in the future development of our motherland. This would not have been possible without High Hope’s intervention.
Dr. Martin Luther King once said that education is the path out of poverty and a passport to economic independence. We thank God who has enabled the Rev Murangi and his American friends to carry out this mission. Once an orphan is enrolled in our programme, High Hope acts as our surrogate parent. After graduating, we are encouraged in turn to come back and contribute to and change the lives of others. For example, after graduating and getting a job, a High Hope beneficiary assumes the responsibility of helping not only the immediate members of his or her family, but the extended family and community as well.
This could easily mean 60 or 70 persons. As an employed person, a beneficiary of High Hope is expected to pay tuition fees for younger relatives, medical bills for the sick or help in building a house for his or her elderly grandmother. For example, one student immediately after graduating from a nursing school was hired by an international health organization. Part of her income was used to build a permanent house for her grandmother in the village. She has also encouraged her niece to attend the same nursing school and paid part of her expenses. Now there will soon be two good incomes in the family. In this way, the programme has a multiplier effect. An orphan graduates from school and gets a job. He or she helps their extended family, who are then able to contribute more to their communities, raising the local standards of living.
A better educated and more affluent community is able to improve the local primary and secondary schools, which in turn, graduate larger numbers of better-educated children, so the positive cycle is reinforced.
Once again the Rev Murangi’s efforts to educate orphans, which began with a small gift from his ordination ceremony more than a decade ago, has changed the lives of hundreds of orphans and turned their lives around.
Like the biblical story of the widow who gave a penny and inspired Jesus to say that though she gave little, she gave all that she had, the Rev Murangi’s own magnanimity has inspired many American donors to give generously to High Hope’s cause and educate hundreds of needy people.
The Rev Sam, like his mentors, the late Canon James Rabwoni and Dr. Martin Luther King, is a man who offers a message of hope both by word and action. He has been and continues to be a father and mentor to hundreds of orphans, and through his self-help projects, an encouragement to many widows and their families. He is a true representative of Africa’s younger generation willing to demonstrate that it is possible to grow up in a poor environment, walk 10 miles a day to primary school barefoot, spend a day on an empty stomach, work as a house-help, pay your own tuition in high school and still excel and remember to help those in need.
The Rev Murangi is not an ordinary priest. He has put his body and soul in his pastoral work in a practical way aided by his expertise in social work. His commitment to the community in Fort Portal and Kabarole and love of his country, and devotion to God speak eloquently on his behalf. And by establishing a programme that is helping refugees from other countries in a foreign land like America, he is setting an example of a true African leader and demonstrating that even Africans can think beyond their tribal boundaries.
Strangely, as Jesus said (Mark 6:4), the Rev Murangi is an unsung hero in his country of birth like the proverbial prophet who goes unrecognised in his own hometown by his own kindred! May God bless him mightly.
The writer is a beneficiary of High Hope International
