Our non-profit organization is dedicated to helping youth in the United States and worldwide. The charitable foundation is a 501c3 tax exempt non-profit organization.
The focus for the last few years and which we expect to be ongoing is directed to supporting the Mbabaali Memorial School for Orphans in Ndejje nnear Kisubi in the east central Africa country of Uganda. By googling the Mbabaali Memorial School for Orphans, you will find this is the only free school for orphans in Uganda. The pictures that you will see here are those taken at the Mbabaali Memorial School for Orphans.
James Kyeyune has been the director of the school for orphans since 2002 when he returned from South Africa to Uganda. His father Peter Mbabaali had founded the school in 2000 and passed away in 2002. From that time James and his wife Diane ran the school and James received no compensation for 8 years. His wife Diane’s earnings provided food for the family and for 14 orphans that James and Diane care for.
With the council of Brother Francis Blouin of the Brothers of Christian Instruction it was determined that we should be pay a salary to James and this was instituted September 1, 2010.
Richard Gagné has and still does personally donate to local causes involving youth as well as adults. Since his first visit to the schol for orphans in 2003, Richard has become very much attached to the orphans at that school and for the time being, his focus is on sustaining that school and in building a bona fide orphanage so that the orphans can remain on the premises and be kept safe.
“It is my hope that these children will live to become young adults and that we will be able to help them through high school and college followig their departure from the Mbabaali Memorial School for Orphans. The school has classes ranging form Kindergarten to Primary 7. These youth will later get jobs in a country which currently has an unemployment rate of 96%. They are raised with basic Christian principles and I firmly believe that they will remember that their lives were saved when James Kyeyune took them into the school. They’re given a free education, shelter, clothing and 3 meals a day. Later, they will be in positions where they can make changes internally within their country.” – Richard A. Gagné
We encourage you to read “How it All Began” to learn more about Richard Gagné’s involvement with the Mbabaali Memorial School for Orphans.
Mission Statement
Most generally, our mission objective is to aid those who are less fortunate. Most of our efforts are directed toward youth.
The pictures you see are taken at the Mbabaali Memorial School for Orphans and you may enlarge these by clicking on each one.
The construction of a new building was begun in early 2010 and that building was completed in early 2011. Pictured are the outside and inside of the “old” outdoor kitchen which took care of the food needs for the orphans from inception of the school in 2000 through May of 2011. The two bottom pictures show the kitchen now within the newly completed building. This will be safer and much more sanitary. Until this building was completed, if it were raining, the children would eat outiside standing. Now they can have their meals under a roof.
This may seem rather crude and lacking to those of us in the United States, because the teachers and orphans are given three meals a day with a water ration throughout the day. Two large black fiberglass storage tanks capture rain water. There simply is not enough wood to burn to boil the water needed. The orphans receive meat once a month. Frankly, they eat better than 90% of the children in Uganda. These children have seen other children in the immediate area die of starvation. They have seen their parents die of Malaria, Typhoid or Yellow Fever, AIDS or what we would call murder. Either tribal warfare or soldiers coming through the area results in the killing of many people.
These orphans deserve an opportunity to live and to grow up. Many of them are parenting a little brother or sister. They are very grateful to have what they have.