In late 2015, I was contacted by a pastor in Uganda named Simon Peter Otudo. I researched him fully to ensure (through other church organizations who had been to Uganda and supported his ministry) that he was legitimate. Pastor Simon asked if I would help raise funds so that he could open a school in Uganda for the hundreds of orphaned children that he supported.
Simon Peter is an amazing servant of others. He has been paralyzed from the waist since the age of two, and has two adopted children in addition to his own four. He oversees a number of small rural churches.
There are estimated to be approximately 2.5 million orphaned children in Uganda, largely because of the AIDS epidemic. Of these, the majority are girls, who are extremely vulnerable. Americans adopt perhaps 600 of these children annually — we cannot effectively help them by adoption, nor should they be separated from their own community and tribal support systems, or their culture.
Lives are changed by schools — education is the key path to lift girls from the poverty cycle, and with a school, basic nutrition can also be provided. Simon Peter had ideas for a school, and a low-cost building that we could (and did) rent. We raised funds locally in Vermont, and then began organizing events in addition to collections at our church to raise funds. This eventually matured into my being installed as pastor at the (previously closed) First Congregational Church of Westfield, Vermont, where one half of collections were applied to church expenses for fuel and repairs; one half were sent directly to Uganda.
When we opened the school, we were surprised that over 290 children showed up to attend. With the monies raised in Vermont, we were able to rent, paint and refurbish the building, construct a necessary latrine, and install fences to protect the children from nearby roadways. Pastor Simon hired 14 certified schoolteachers, for approximately $115 per month each, and they worked from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM daily. Local citizens were asked to contribute food, so the children received two basic meals daily.
After several months, we were unable to attract sufficient funds in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to maintain all these expenses, and we slipped behind. The teachers stayed on, we finished the school year with the blessings of the Ugandan government, but then we closed to catch up. We subsequently paid all monies owed in full, and we have continued to support Simon Peter’s small church ministries.
It is our hope that Simon Peter will visit America to explain more about life in Uganda, and his hopes to reopen the school with sustained funding. (It was costing about $7 per child per month to provide a full-time education, with two meals per day — NO money was absorbed in administration costs in the U.S.: everything raised went to Uganda). If a small group of churches wished to oversee an effective, low-cost ministry in Uganda, the groundwork has been prepared to do so, with proven integrity.
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John Klar 