March 15, 2010
The civil war that ravaged Uganda for a generation is over, but the consequences of that conflict remain: tortured land, economic ruin, displaced people, orphaned children.
It's those children — the thousands whose parents were killed by war and disease — that are both the burden and the hope of an African nation in the midst of rebuilding itself.
"Our children are having a lot of problems," said Norman Okot, 71, whose grandson is one of those who lost his parents to HIV/AIDS. "They are not able to go to school because nobody can look after them."
Okot was in Orlando Sunday at Discovery Church for the screening and discussion of a documentary about his grandson by the non-profit advocacy group Invisible Children. The film, Emmy, recounts how AIDS killed the boy's father when Emmy was five and his mother when he was 12.
He is now 17 and in high school on a scholarship from Invisible Children. The San Diego-based secular organization has raised enough money to send 600 Ugandan children to high school and another 200 to college.
It costs about $35 a month for a Ugandan child to attend high school — money that even children with both parents cannot afford, said Comfort Okello, a 25-year-old Ugandan woman who works in economic development for Invisible Children.
"We feel this is the only way we are going to rebuild the future," Okello said. "By putting them in school, we are giving them wealth that can nobody can take away. "
At Discovery Church, support of Invisible Children is part of the church's mission to work for long-term solutions to local and global problems, said Cole NeSmith, who heads a young people's ministry.
"Invisible Children wants to help these kids out with education and mentoring and maintaining a long-term perspective," NeSmith said. "Their long-term investment is really what we value in the lives of these kids."
A committed dedication to educating a generation of children whose lives have been filled with loss and suffering is the only way for a poor, agrarian country like Uganda to recover from the devastation of war and disease, Okello said.
"You see a kid who is homeless, a kid who has no parents, and the kid is praying for just to have an education. That is all he is asking for," she said. "We feel that by investing in these children's future, ten years from now we have a stable generation."
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