Shift 8

Outreach to Africa

Recently I had an amazing opportunity to travel to Africa with a group of 25 like-minded but very diversely talented individuals.
We where invited by Evelyn Komuntale, Founder and Director of Outreach to Africa, to come and help her with her work in Fort Portal.  Fort Portal is located 311 km west of Kampala and according to Wikipedia, has a population of approximately 45,000.  Once we where there you quickly realize that the population numbers that Wikipedia has are greatly lower than the actual numbers.  Fort Portal and surrounding area probably has at least twice that number.

The group I traveled with, (Streams of Hope), had been raising monies towards the building of recreation/sports center for a school that was to be the main project that we would be working on once we arrived.  Our goal is to raise $30,000 and we had approximately $18,000 of that before leaving for this trip, which would have been more than enough to help start the project.  The thing about mission trips that you have to be very flexible.
Once we arrived and got to talk with Evelyn directly, she told us that she had run into problems with the workers that where suppose to have started the foundation of the building.  The workers had wanted to just lay the foundation of building right at ground level, but being in an earthquake area the actual footings had to be dug out and placed approximately 7 feet deep.  Evelyn had to fire these workers and the footings where not in place when we arrived so building of the recreation center couldn’t be started.

But as with any good director, she had other projects lined up for us to work on.  The school that she had built was almost ready to open but there will still a few things that needed to be done before opening day. A kitchen had to be finished and temporary showers had to be installed so that she would be allowed to run the school as a boarding school.  So instead of building a recreation center (which is still in the plans to be done), our work crew immediately began working on finishing her kitchen and getting the showers installed.  I know that it sounds elaborate but I have added some pictures so that you can see that their quality of life standards by no means meets what we have here in Canada.

Starting the kitchen

Adding kitchen bricks

Kitchen trusses finally up

Pouring the kitchen floor

Shower install completed

So while the work crew was working on getting the necessary things done so that Evelyn could open her school, the other team members had equally important things to do.  In our team, there where 4 pastors that travelled to the local villages and ran ministry training programs with the local pastors and how to live a moral life and better serve the local people.  We also had a few nurses on our team that traveled around running a medical clinic where they would perform first aid and AIDS testing as well.  And lastly (but probably the most exciting) we had our children’s ministry team, which I was part of, that traveled to 12 different schools and ministered to over 10,000 children.

X-Ray Viewer

Clinic Room

Clinic Lab

Pastor Mark at a school

Nathan at a school

I found the trip to be a very inspiring experience that has added to my personal life and has motivated me to be a better person.
Below I have also added a video of some photos and video that I put together from the trip so that you can experience a little of what we had.   If you would like to help out in any way with either Streams of Hope or Outreach to Africa please feel free to leave a comment on this site or contact me through Streams of Hope.
info@desertstream.net
Tel: 613.968.5348

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Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

I work for a school board, not as a teacher but as an administrator in our computer department, and over the last couple years there has been an increasing push in the literacy and numeracy areas of academics. I have noticed a dwindling in arts, music, and physical education in our elementary schools, but on the other hand there has been a rise on the more creative side of education in our secondary schools. They have been offering guitar class as an option to “band”, the drama classes have become increasingly more popular as well. The biggest change that I have noticed is in the computer education.

When I was in high school, computer class meant one of 2 things, either computer programming or office administration. I am seeing less of the programming courses and more of the creative side of things, like digital art, photography, and video editing.

I believe that as our students on a whole are bored with school and by offering them more “creative/expressive” type of courses it allows them to explore who they really are. Recently I was asked to speak at a career day at one of our secondary schools and I recommended to the students that now is the time for them to enroll in courses that they normally wouldn’t enroll in. Try and art class, take a drama class, volunteer at things you may have never thought of. All of these things help with expanding your sense of you.

Anyway, enough of my rant . Ken is a great speaker and this was a good video for anyone that works in the education field to watch.

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Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense

I had an interesting discussion with an elementary schools teacher the other day regarding technology and how we are still using very old teaching methods in the classroom. I personally believe that this type of technology can greatly enhance a persons day to day functionality.
This technology could also be slightly modified to help people with disabilities like Alzheimer where the computer could help assist them through their day.

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