Good News!

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a situation we had with one of our friends in Rwanda. I've not talked to George yet to see what has evolved since our chat, but I have talked to others. Things are slowly but surely happening and that is GOOD!!!

Know what else is GOOD? For the past two years we've been working on raising money to rebuild Good Hope School in Kampala. The cost is only about $60,000 to rebuild the entire school! But because of other projects and day-to-day life, it's been hard to focus just on the school and really give it the attention it needs. Let's face it, we're small; and to be heard we have to cause a LOT of havoc around here. Especially since our city is filled with nonprofits and actually has a much higher number of nonprofits than our capital city when it really comes down to it. Because of that, there is a lot of competition for donors. Combine that with the fact that our organization doesn't even help its own community and it's difficult to recruit donors.

Our donors are mainly people who know me personally or who already have fallen in love with Africa. But anyway... let's fast forward a bit. A couple years ago one of our donors said her son was interested in helping Hope Aid with some projects and that's how the school project came along. The only catch is that he's pre-med so he's really busy. But we were able to do some really neat fundraisers and raised a little over $2,000. That was enough to rebuild one whole classroom!

I talked to said student, "P," earlier this week and he decided that maybe this project is too big. Uhuh... it is big. For us at least... So he asked what else we could do.... which leads me to the GOOD news!

Back in September, our Ugandan HAI directors sent us information about a clinic in need of some help. They mainly needed supplies and beds for the maternity ward. Since this fit right in with P's medical training we decided this would be a great match. We emailed the directors and now, we have a plan! I'm not exactly sure when the money will be sent, I think we still need a little more information, but it's another project that will be done and that is GOOD!!!

Linda, one of our directors, is in the middle here. (Linda, if you are reading this you are now officially famous!) The clinic is in Kabarole, which is the county of most of our projects. I'll be sure to post more once we know when things will start moving along! 'Til then, I'm rejoicing!