OVID — Judy Brown is a member of an organization called Child 2 Youth Foundation. This past summer the resident of Ovid, a small community near Montpelier in Bear Lake County, took a three-week humanitarian journey to Kampala, Uganda, with Child 2 Youth founder, Barbara Luke of California, to help the children she sponsors and many others with various different projects.

    Child 2 Youth is a volunteer foundation for children managed by all volunteers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

    Each child sponsored is an orphan or needy child who receives food, clothing, and an education as well as a new adoptive family. These children can know that they are no longer alone with the generosity of those who sponsor them.

    Over the past year and a half Brown has supported roughly 13 children through the sponsorship foundation.

    Funds Brown sends to this foundation have gone to the children completely, and focus on getting the children of Uganda an education.

    “You just can’t believe how they live,” Brown says of the living conditions of the children in Uganda. “Most of these kids are orphans,” she states, explaining that their parents die from many different things, including illnesses such as AIDS.

    Simple things like hygiene and sewing skills are almost obsolete to many of the people of Kampala. Brown had the opportunity to teach these and other basic skills to help in day to day life.

    Clean drinking water is not a commodity in Uganda. Two years ago there was no drinking water available from a spring due to animals getting into it as well as other contaminants. Brown and others from Child 2 Youth took this contaminated spring, covered it, and made it so the water from it was potable.

    In addition to the improvement of the spring, toilet facilities were also installed in one village. Something one takes for granted every day here in the U.S. is a new addition to some of these people.

    Before the trip to the different villages of Kampala, Child 2 Youth was able to raise money for five treadle, or non-electric powered, sewing machines to educate the people of Kampala how to sew. The machines are available to women of the community to use whenever they are needed.

    Many projects were accomplished by Brown and the other volunteers of Child 2 Youth during their 20-day excursion, in which they worked 10 hours a day. A floor was placed in a school that was only dirt prior to this.

    One woman was afraid of snakes getting into her home through a window, therefore glass was installed to prevent the risk.

    “I saw so much poverty,” Brown recounts. She taught and helped some of the children sew their own bandanas. After the children had completed their bandanas, Brown brought a mirror so the kids could look at themselves and their new creations. However, the bandanas were not the highlight of the activity, it was the mirror. Some of these children had never seen a mirror in their lives, and were overjoyed at seeing their reflections.

    Teaching these children the basic necessities of life was the biggest accomplishment Brown was trying to achieve while in Uganda. “One of the biggest questions these people have is, ‘How am I going to feed my children?”’ Self reliance was what Brown wanted to try and leave with the people of Kampala.

    Bartering is the primary way of life for the people of Uganda. Earning an actual income isn’t a common practice by the Ugandan people. For example, a teacher would only make $25 a month income. Money is a rare commodity.

    Brown and others with Child 2 Youth, have given several families who own land, two goats — one male and one female. This way the goats can produce young as well as milk to sell as a source of income rather than just bartering.

    In addition to the raising of goats, the Ugandan people were also taught how to garden, simply by handing them a shovel, hoe, rake, and a seed. This was foreign to many of them, yet an extremely beneficial skill that many had never done before; another vital self-reliance tool.

    “It was just wonderful,” Brown says of her experiences in Uganda with the children she sponsors through Child 2 Youth. “I’ll never be the same.”