Out of the hundreds of impoverished villages in Gulu district, Touch the World Uganda has, for one reason or another, settled in the village of Adak - making its home among the people it desires to serve. Here, we are constructing a health center (the only one around), a vocational school, and a well for clean water. However, we are still not fully in touch with the strengths and needs of this community. And how can we rebuild a war-torn village without working together with its inhabitants? Thus, TTWU has given me the task of LEARNING about the community and BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS with village dwellers.
For the first few days, I traveled around on bicycle - sometimes alone, sometimes with local guides - using a GPS (courtesy Adam Boe) to construct a rudimentary map of the bush surrounding the village. Now, I have partnered up with a local village leader, Alfred, to visit as many families as I can within 5km of Adak. These visits serve many purposes. Of course, they are the introductions necessary in partnering with locals. Additionally, we are using the visits to create a rough population survey of our area of ministry. Finally, we are conducting friendly, informal surveys to get a general idea of the assets of the community - livestock, skills, capital, land, cash crops, etc. In the future, we plan on working together to capitalize on these strengths to rebuild the area.
Right now, we are only focusing on the strengths of the villagers - for their whole lives, their weaknesses have been shoved in their faces by USAID, WFP, the UN, and even World Vision. The climb out of poverty to empowerment and liberation relies more upon the maximization of strengths than on the temporary alleviation of problems. Of course, we are noting their problems as well, but always with the mindset of using the blessings God has given them to fix them.
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