International Development: Lori Acton

Hello! Below is an excerpt from our International Development Director Lori Acton's recent update letter. We love Lori and so appreciate all the hard work she does in Uganda! "Hello! I hope you are having a nice fall! It seems like there is so much going on in the US these days with Hurricane Sandy, the elections, even the time change. I've been trying to keep up with everything as much as possible on the Internet, but it can be difficult. Usually, about this time of the year, I start missing fall. It is definitely my favorite season in the US. I hope it has been a good one for you! Maybe someone can watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade for me. My September ended well with a trip to the NGO board at internal affairs. About a year ago the Ugandan government changed the registration requirements for a foreign NGO (non-government organization) to work in country. Basically, we needed to apply for a replacement registration to continue doing the work we are doing. This can always be a bit tricky because you never know what you are going to get from the Ugandan government. Recently, a report was released called the East Africa Bribery Index 2012, which says that Uganda is the most corrupt nation in East Africa. Thankfully, the way has been paved for me in this process. I walked into the office and a man at the desk looks up at me and says, "Do you think you can help me with this?" I walked over to see what he was doing and managed to help him make a newsletter for his job. He and the other people in the office were so wonderful and helpful. I met one woman named Brenda, whose daughter is dealing with heart problems. I'm so thankful that this process turned out to be an easy one, but that I was also able to build relationships with new people and share life with them. I will look forward to seeing these people again in the near future. As for our registration, I am supposed to pick up our replacement at the end of this month. This will allow Fount of Mercy to work in Uganda for another five years! Of course, this isn't the only thing the Fount crew has been up to this month; we have also hosted several workshops. For organization leaders, we offered a communications class, which will be wrapping up today. We've had our largest attendance yet with 23 people. We held a follow-up workshop for preschool teachers in Masese 1 to continue to train them on using Uganda's curriculum for early education. Finally, our community health team is working on adding on to the work they did last month to help adults working with teens. We will be inviting people to attend another workshop this month to continue building knowledge on how to prevent early pregnancy and the spread of HIV/AIDS." Thanks Lori... we love you! Fount of Mercy