Children of Grace is an organization that provides, “Education, healthcare and empowerment programs, and most importantly, the love of Jesus” to Ugandan children. I had come to know the American staff and founders and admired their dedication to the kids they’re serving. I also marveled at the “first-world” space they had created for their central office, which also served as a training and resource center for the children they served. We created a computer training center for them on a trail basis to see if they could properly care for the machines. We were not disappointed.
When we first arrived in Uganda, I had a vision of creating computer labs in existing schools. I envisioned huge, sweeping wonders of technology with the latest equipment, fast Internet and in-built training software to educate students and teachers. This model failed. Not only was our budget too small, but the schools we used as testbeds largely neglected or outright abused the equipment. Eventually, we reclaimed that equipment and fell back on a community center model where we could being teachers and students into our own space and train them. In this way, we could monitor and maintain all of our equipment and provide the training that’s so vital.
However, we still had lots of equipment sitting around which found a home at Children of Grace. Here are some photos of that installation. Scroll down past the pictures to see the recent update!
I’m proud to say that one year after installation, the center looks exactly as it did when we installed it. The computers are clean, well-maintained, and most-importantly, used by lots and lots of kids.
This is a huge success, and I’m so proud of this partnership. I’ll post some photos of the kids training as soon as I get them from the staff at COG.
One-year update:
We’ve received an amazing update from CoG and this one is quite personal. Be sure to read this inspirational update about Umaru, a CoG student!
