• LOCATION: Rwentobo, Uganda
• PROJECT: Girls’ Home and Sponsorship Program
• DIRECTOR: Medad and Connie Birungi
• FINANCIAL NEED: $5,000 Housing rental costs for one year

$5,000 Current 2023 school fees for the local girls

The government of Uganda recently released a study declaring that 20 percent of girls in that nation are “extremely vulnerable” because of poverty, lack of education, abuse and teen pregnancy. As in other parts of Africa, girls are often kept out of school because families assume they don’t need to know anything except cooking skills. Many girls end up pregnant in their early teens and never finish school.

Rev. Medad Birungi and his wife, Connie, have been working for years to lift girls out of that vulnerable place. The Mordecai Project’s director, Lee Grady, has been working with the Birungis for more than 12 years, and they have become partners to stop the abuse and neglect of teen girls in the region surrounding Rwentobo, where the Birungis have built a school. Through a sponsorship program, we plan to lift girls out of poverty and give them a chance to finish high school and hopefully enroll in the local university. We also plan to help build a residence for the girls so that they can live on school property.

We have been providing housing for a group of struggling single mothers, and we are helping some of them finish school. We are also training these women in entrepreneurial skills so they can feed their families.