By Karin Ringheim | President, Friends of Canon Gideon Foundation, USA
The Reverend Canon Gideon Byamugisha, an Anglican priest in Uganda with a parish outside of Kampala, was the first religious leader in Africa to publicly announce in 1992 that he was HIV positive. He co-founded an influential organization of African religious leaders living with or personally affected by HIV AIDS and later an international organization of prominent religious leaders who were have been central to HIV/AIDS activistivism throughout the world. In 2009, Canon Gideon received Japan's highest honor, the 26th annual Niwano Peace Prize “In recognition of his works to uphold the dignity and human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS”.
With prize money from an earlier award, Canon Gideon founded the Hope Institute for Transformational Leadership and Development, which provides holistic vocational education to poor and vulnerable youth who have been orphaned by or adversely affected by the AIDS epidemic in Uganda. Since 2003 the Hope Institute has educated more than 3000 youth and has graduated 1200 young adults in accredited vocational fields to enable them to become not only skilled and employed, but also HIV/AIDS competent, and socially aware leaders in their communities.
In 2013, Canon Gideon was chosen by Sewanee University as it's Brown Faculty Fellow and his semester on campus developed into a partnership between FOCAFIGO and Sewanee to provide opportunities for Sewanee students to serve and learn from the students and staff of FOCAGIFO. Since then, numbers of Sewanee students have interned at FOCAGIFO and facutly visits have assisted in building organizational capacity. These visitors have had the opportunity to see first-hand the success that the Hope Institute has had in assisting vulnerable youth to have a better life.
The Friends of Canon Gideon Foundation USA was incorporated by U.S. friends in 2015 as a charitable organization to broaden support for the work of Canon Gideon and the Hope Institute. Since that time, it has raised thousands through its annual fundraiser organized by Board Chair, Sally Hubbard of Sewanee, Tennessee. Our GlobalGiving donors have augmented these funds and together we have succeeded in helping to keep the student body safe and in renovating a space for a new library. While most of our funds supported the library, our funds also secured a tent to help with social distancing, sanitizers, washing buckets and spraying equipment for dorms and classrooms. We supported the Fashion and Design students to make masks for the student body. Students were encouraged to board in the dorms rather than commute to avoid the risk of Covid exposure while commuting. The expense of Covid testing, ranging from $40 to $70 per test, made it untenable to repeatedly test the students, but the safely precautions have kept the students and faculty healthy.
By government decree all educational facilites in Uganda were shut down twice during 2021, the first during most of June and July, the second in September. The school has and will survive these shutdowns, and has even added plumbing and shoe-making to its range of vocational courses in 2021. The school is expected to reopen on November 1 with safety protocols in place, and students will have the new library space for research and study. The purchase of expensive technical books in the appropriate vocational subjects remains a challenge.
As we bring this project to a close, we would like to express our gratitude to our donors who helped this worthwhile project achieve its goals.
For more information about FOCAGIFO and the Hope Institute please visit: https://www.focagifo.net
By Karin RIngheim | President, Friends of Canon Gideon Foundation, USA
By Karin Ringheim | President, Friends of Canon Gideon Foundation
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