- LOCATION: Rwentobo, Uganda
- PROJECT: Women’s Empowerment Center and Shelter
- DIRECTOR: Medad and Connie Birungi
- FINANCIAL NEED: $70,000 Cost to construct shelter and classroom building
$5,000 annual school fees for 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 15 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. We have been paying school fees for girls for several years, as well as providing tailoring classes in a rented building. Now we are breaking ground to build a permanent classroom facility and a shelter where women in crisis can receive counseling and protection.
