Phoebe Education Fund for Orphans (PEFO)
October 15, 2009
Jinja , Uganda
“You don’t pay love back,” wrote Lily Hammond, an obscure U.S. author, in 1916. “You pay it forward.”
Paying it forward has become a catch phrase in North America — but in Africa, these words often come to life in amazing ways.
Look, for example, at Justine, Richard and Robert Ojambo, three handsome, bright and impoverished little boys, orphaned in Uganda when their devoted mother Phoebe died of AIDS. Inspired by her dreams for them, Justine sought the help of a Dutch missionary so that he and his brothers could attend school.
The boys excelled. With the missionary’s help, they not only survived and graduated secondary school, they won scholarships to European universities. The brothers might
have stayed in Europe, but they came back to Uganda to work with impoverished rural women and children. In 2003, the brothers founded the Phoebe Educational Fund for AIDS Orphans and Vulnerable Children (PEFO), in their mother’s name. “In serving others, we are remembering her,” JPEFO is now supporting more than 300 orphans and vulnerable children, and 200 grannies who care for them ustine said.
They began with a microfinance project for women, but Justine was nagged by the desperation of the orphaned children in Jinja, where PEFO is based. The Fund began to set up self-esteem clubs for the children, then to pay for school fees, uniforms and food. PEFO is now supporting more than 300 orphans and vulnerable children — and 200 grannies who care for them — and Justine happily reports “They have turned their lives around.”
The SLF has been a part of that turn-around. Not only has the Foundation bought a brick-making machine for PEFO, to build houses for grannies who were living in dilapidated, leaky shacks, but Canadian grandmothers themselves, on their visit to Jinja last year, pitched in and helped build a new brick house for one of the grannies. One of the newly rehoused grannies, 80 year old Margaret Isiko, told visitors how she and her grandchildren would rush outside when it rained lest their leaky house collapse on them. Now they are safe, dry and happy in a sturdy home.
PEFO’s huge organic gardens — spinach, onions, chives and more — are pesticide free and contribute to the organic compost that in turn, nurtures new crops.
And those new houses, built of bricks from the SLF machine — how are the recipients chosen? Simple. The grandmothers themselves decide whose need is greatest.
Paying it forward. It’s an idea that, community by community, could turn the tide of destruction and begin, instead, an African renaissance.