Building Strong Bodies, Brighter Futures for Ugandan Orphans

Humanitarian aid

By The Prem Rawat Foundation

Between 1996 and 2002, civil war and epidemics of cholera, malaria, and HIV/AIDS devastated western Uganda's Kasese district, creating a generation of orphaned street children. While political conditions have now stabilized, overwhelmed government agencies have been unable to provide basic necessities such as food, clean water, and education to many of these children, estimated to make up as much as 17% of the population. With neither families nor social services to help them, the children exist as wild scavengers, with little hope of developing into healthy, productive adults. In 2004 the Kikimu Agriculture Research Centre (KARC) launched the African Ark Preparatory School on an acre of land in Nyakasanga Umoja, an urban slum in Kasese to help these orphans. The school's mission was to improve the lives of 200-250 vulnerable children from grades 1-5 through education. The program included a morning snack, but that wasn't enough to assuage their gnawing hunger.

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