UCE Uganda Team Educates and Compassionately Counsels
Bringing the messages of abstinence and being
faithful to large groups of students is
viewed by the UCE Uganda team as a ministry
of critical importance, indeed it is
life-saving.
As large
numbers of
students and teachers make this commitment,
they create a
supportive community which encourages
students-some of whom are bearing painful
burdens. In a ten-school, week-long
outreach,
the types of situations encountered by the UCE
team require extraordinary wisdom.
The UCE
team, ever faithfully helping to bear these
burdens, upon return from a particularly
exhausting week, writes to us,
"Some students complained about parents who
force them to marry at an
early age. Others reported about
students being taken as sex slaves by
guardians who pay for them fees. There was a
case of a
student who was forced to work in a video
hall for his father where there are
pornographic shows. He hates this but his
father threatened to stop paying fees if he
quits the job. He needed counseling and it
was done. There are some students who
confessed they were HIV positive and they
needed support and guidance and needed
information about care and treatment. Some
students have STD's and had been fearing to
reveal them to their parents for fear of
parents being furious at them. Some students
were at the verge of becoming prostitutes due
to lack of school fees and they thought that
it would be an avenue of earning school
fees.
So many challenges including the above were
addressed during the question and answer
session. Where the
situation was sensitive it required private
extensive counseling from
UCE.
Thanks to all who
contributed towards saving
a soul. For all the days of our lives, let us
work harder for a better future and when our
time to leave this world comes, we shall rest
with smiles on our faces for having done our
best to leave this world better than we found
it. God bless you all."
-Kenneth
Rukundo,
UCE Uganda Programs Officer
Uganda has
had the
world's
most dramatic success against AIDS.The HIV
prevalence in Uganda has dropped from 21% in
1991 to
6.7% in 2005. UCE has been part of the solution.
PLEDGES MADE MEAN LIVES SAVED
Making
the decision to abstain and be faithful in
marriage affects the individual, the
community and the nations that are hard hit
by AIDS. It's difficult to grasp that ...
Every eight seconds a person is
infected with HIV somewhere in the world...62%
of the 39.5 million people with HIV live in
Sub-Saharan Africa...Young people between
15 and
24 account for 40 percent of new infections
worldwide ...
(WHO/UNAIDS 12/06)
UCE Is Helping People Live Healthy
Lives...UCE is HELPING People Stay Alive!
Click HERE to Sponsor UCE
Quick Links...
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Where to begin the news about UCE?
- This month, UCE tallied 18,031 abstinence
pledges
since initiation of UCE outreaches in Uganda,
Africa
- UCE Burundi has been training youth
leaders and held meetings to introduce the UCE
couples program
- UCE Uganda moved into new headquarters,
which includes a spacious guesthouse for on-site
volunteers
- I had speaking engagements encouraging teen
abstinence in Washington DC and New Mexico
- A Canadian medical student has volunteered
her help to Dr Autumn Dawn Galbreath and the
UCE team
in developing the HIV/AIDS/STD manual
- The UCE Board becomes international with
member, the Rev. Ephraim Radner, joining
Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada as
Professor of Historical Theology
- Ken and I head off to Uganda and Burundi
for a
month this summer to join the UCE teams and
learn from them.
Kenneth Rukundo, UCE-Uganda Programs
Officer, writes, "Thanks
to all who
contributed towards saving
a soul. For all the days of our lives, let us
work harder for a better future and when our
time to leave this world comes, we shall rest
with smiles on our faces for having done our
best to leave this world better than we found
it. God bless you all.
Kim Dernovsek
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Abstinence and Faithfulness Message Inspires Burundi Teachers and Youth
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Photo: Couples, curious about the abstinence
and faithfulness mission of
UCE, listen to the explanation of UCE-Burundi
National Director, Rt Rev Martin Nyaboho
Reporting back on the progress of the Burundi
launch of Universal Chastity Education, the
team writes, "The Ebenezer
Choir from Makamba Cathedral joined the UCE
team to entertain the 762 students enrolled
at those schools.
We are happy indeed that 360 have
willingly signed the commitment cards.
Both the teachers and the students have
appreciated the programme. One of the
lecturers who is still a bachelor witnessed
publicly and said:
I commit myself to the teaching of UCE
programme from now onwards and will be an
example to both my colleagues and my
students ".
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Back to AFRICA: Summer 2007
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Photo: Ken and Kim Dernovsek celebrating
their 30th
wedding
anniversary prior to departure for Africa
Join Ken
and me
vicariously
as we blog away
during our travels this summer back to
AFRICA, where we
will join the UCE Uganda team in meetings at
the new headquarters, be the first ones to
stay at the UCE volunteer guesthouse, and
then get out into rural Uganda on a youth
outreach. Our month's travels will take us
also to Burundi, where I'll use my
best-possible French and we will get to
participate in a UCE-Burundi abstinence and
faithfulness event or two and meet the
UCE-Burundi team, headed by Bishop Martin
Nyaboho, who had previously visited us in
Pueblo CO and gained further inspiration when
he visited UCE-Uganda in 2005.Our first UCE
volunteers,
Andrew (who is now in Lesotho, Africa for two
years with
the Peace Corps) and Dr. Autumn Dawn
Galbreath(who is
back home in Texas volunteering long-distance
on the UCE Manual project) did a superb job
blogging and will be a tough
act to follow! But we welcome you to come and
join us
via at the UCEglobal
Blog
and we will update
you on Universal Chastity Education in
Africa, first-hand!
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Universal Chastity Education, Inc. (UCE) is an
educational organization established in 2004 and
determined to be a public charity, status 170
(b) (1)
(A) (vi), exempt from Federal income tax under
section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue
Code. Its
purpose is to promote through education sexual
abstinence until marriage and marital
fidelity as
healthy lifestyles free from sexually
transmitted
diseases including HIV and AIDS. UCE operates in
Uganda,
AFRICA, with staffed headquarters in
Kampala and most youth outreach/educational
events take
place in rural Uganda. Universal Chastity
Education,
Inc. is duly registered under the Republic of
Uganda
Non-governmental Organisations Registration
Statute,
1989, certificate #6196. UCE activities
launched in
Burundi, AFRICA
in December 2006.
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