On the Ground with The Propel Foundation

By Mickey Woolard, Founder

Almost every day I get questions about how things are in Uganda. I answer the questions with current information from our staff. With the meeting calls I have with the staff in Uganda every Friday and also with the help of WhatsApp, we can communicate daily if need be. By this time each year I would have already been to Uganda twice. My next trip will be number 18 since 2014. It’s hard not being there, very hard, but I understand the worldwide pandemic, needed safe practices and travel bans. No one really knows when travel will resume. This year? 2021? Patience and safety right now. 

The Propel Foundation is solid because of our wonderful staff on the ground in Uganda and our Board of Directors. Working each day under the restrictions of Uganda’s COVID-19 plan, Achim Apangu (Coordinator/Projects Director), Pennie Muhereza (Education Director), and Ronald Okumu (Medical Director) continue Propel’s work. I wanted to today and each day acknowledge them for all the work they are doing and just how excellent they are doing with all of the things going on around them concerning the virus.

There is no definite answer right now about when school will resume and what it will look like. Maybe a September announcement and plan for the remainder of the year. That is what we are hoping. Pennie continues to meet with teachers in the district to develop curriculum for when school resumes. Medical needs are still there even though school is not in session. Ronald has initiated a school visit plan to continue to check on the children of the schools and families to treat illnesses and provide leadership in the areas of health education and hygiene. Achim is busy currently researching and  planning for three projects that will be announced soon. 

The Propel Foundation is taking a big step to be prepared when school resumes and travel is more open. We have developed a Comprehensive Strategy Plan outlining how Propel will assist the schools/families when the schools reopen. The plan (proposed) will be approved by the Board of Directors at their August meeting. Special thanks to our Ugandan staff and also Hilary Sadowsky and Ali McDaneld for putting this together. I really wanted Propel to be ready when things resume and be ready with alternatives because there will not be one answer to many things.

From all of us at Propel, thank you for reading and thank you, as always, for your continued support.

Mickey Woolard, Founder

Wake up- It’s Your Turn Now

This morning upon waking up I was reminded about the start of the Propel Team day in Uganda. A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day about much the same thing and I know those thoughts have greatly influenced me today. 

The day starts early in Uganda. Birds chirping, roosters crowing, bodas (motorcycles carrying passengers and supplies) rolling on their way to a job, smells of the stoves of wood or charcoal burning getting ready to prepare food for the day, the sound of a village waking up. You see, Uganda is unlike/like many other places in the world. You can just feel it in the air. Purpose. Routine. No Routine. Expected things. Unexpected things. People. Time moves at a different pace than anywhere I have ever been. 

That is what I am so so missing right now. Our February/March trip was canceled and our June one as well. Our Ugandan Propel Foundation staff of three are doing an incredible job right now with the things that are or are not going on. You see, they too as in many parts of the world have been stopped by COVID-19. No businesses in the market except essential services, schools closed, limited movement and travel, curfews, restrictions, and health care requirements. Sound familiar?

As I talk almost daily in some form or another with the staff and people in the villages, so many stories are pouring out about daily life in that area right now. Stories that need to be told.What needs to be done? What is the plan? Food? Sound familiar?

So, in this blog, those stories will be told. Stories that will make you smile, think, cry, change you. That’s one of the many responsibilities of our foundation. Telling the stories of a land halfway around the world. Working together. Establishing a closer community to live in. Helping others. Here or in Uganda. We all need to help each other. Because all of us need to……..

Wake-up It’s Your Turn Now

Talk soon and Take Care,

Mickey Woolard

Founder

Propel Foundation

mawoolard@propelteaching.org

A Different Approach

Hello and welcome back to all the return visitors to our blog. If it is your first time visiting, please take ten minutes to explore our website. On it, you will find the basics about what we do and can also sign up to receive email notifications for all of our new blog posts and other updates.

 It is our hope that these blog pieces will not only stand to inform you on the work that The Propel Foundation is doing, but also to greater inform you on the general issues and solutions to problems that we and many organizations encounter while trying to fulfill our mission. One of the greatest of these problems is misinformation and sensationalism that often clouds the truth. The solution to battling this specific problem is to educate people on it. This is an ever-important thing to do as many misbeliefs inhibit us from fulfilling said mission to our greatest potential.

The first bit of misinformation that I’d like to address is the idea that the world and its populations are broken up into two parts – developed and developing. Look, the world is an ultra-complicated place and we need tools and maps to break down the enormous amount of data in order to get a grasp of it. Otherwise, we’d be stuck with problems that are increasingly difficult to solve. However, the issue with oversimplification is that it makes it easy to overlook a population’s uniqueness and progress, therefore, again, making it more difficult to come up with solutions to their vexing issues. It’s hard to see progress within a specific country if you are dividing the world into “developed” (rich) and “developing” (poor) countries. When you only have those two options, you’re more likely to have a standard in mind and think that anyone who doesn’t meet that standard is poor. Therefore, instead of just the developed and developing world, we prefer to look at it like this:

This useful diagram comes from a book called Factfullness by Hans Rosling, a Swedish doctor who spent the greater part of his career working in lower- and middle-income societies, helping to battle epidemics and common health problems that these societies typically face. The results of his many years of research can also be found at www.gapminder.org. Each of the yellow figures in the diagram represents one-billion people. I could summarize further, but I think it’s best if I let Bill Gates do it. On his blog he states, “Hans compares this instinct (to dividing the world in two) to standing on top of a skyscraper and looking down at a city. All of the other buildings will look short to you whether they’re ten stories or 50 stories high. It’s the same with income. Life is significantly better for those on level 2 than level 1, but it’s hard to see that from level 4 unless you know to look for it.”

So, what does life look like for each of the four income levels?

Diagram number two from www.gapminder.com is a superb one. It shows what the activities of daily living looks like at each of the different income levels. As you can see, life really does differ greatly between each of the different income levels. Furthermore, going from one level to the next is as beneficial as it is difficult. Imagine living on Level 1, for instance. You eat the same, mundane, meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner (if you’re lucky enough to get three meals). You sleep on the floor, which is most likely dirt. You walk barefoot to get around, which means you walk barefoot up to several miles to get water (that you hope is still fresh/drinkable). The bulk of your day and your work is surviving to the following day. But, if you have a bit of luck and save what you can, maybe you can get to Level 2 one day. Let’s look at how awesome level 2 is relative to level 1. You’re not walking barefoot anymore! This makes water more accessible, you are more well-nourished, and you’re not waking up in the dirt – instead you’re waking up feeling rested and ready to take on the day. Once you’ve ‘leveled up,’ you are more likely, and better able, to move up once again. There are two points I’d like to make here:

1.       If we instead showed you only two sets of pictures and labelled them “Developing” and “Developed,” my guess is that you would have accepted it as is. I will also venture to guess that now that you have seen the not-so-subtle differences, you are looking at the world in a slightly different manner. It’s a great example of how facing the problems with facts can open your eyes to solutions. How many different ideas can you now come up with to help people, families, to move from level 1 to level 2? 

2.       Another guess here:  You looked at level 4 and thought to yourself, ‘my car’ or ‘my bed’ or ‘my kitchen’ looks better than that. Well, you’re right. The majority of Americans live in the upper regions of level 4. I say this not to guilt you but rather to show you the differences that occur even within the four income levels.

What does any of this have to do with Propel and what we’re doing in Uganda? In order to answer that, let’s turn to one last diagram from the folks over at Gap Minder (I’ll show a screenshot below that will suffice to make my point, but I strongly encourage you to go to https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles and play around with this interactive chart. It’s incredibly fun).

At the top of the graph you’ll find the different income levels. The Y axis shows life expectancy in years and the X axis shows GDP per capita (incomes). Finally, the size of the circles shows how large a population is. When we compare Uganda and the United States, we obviously see some stark differences. What’s great about this graph, however, is that it shows just how big those differences are. In 2018, Uganda’s life expectancy is 63.2 years, which matches the US’s in 1940. Furthermore, Uganda’s current GDP per capita is actually less than the US’s was in 1800… 1800!. This is of course adjusted for inflation.

If you look at the trends of that screenshot, you’ll see the incremental increases in quality of life in both the United States and in Uganda (if you visit the interactive chart, you’ll see that the entire world has been trending up). Yes, there are stark differences, but Uganda is, without a doubt, getting better. A country’s current conditions can be both bad and better. Uganda in the past decade has made amazing strides – the average citizen has gone from being squarely in level one to being on the surface of level 2. This is where Propel’s (and organizations like it) work becomes increasingly important.

Propel’s main goal is to increase the quality of education that children in rural Uganda receive. In order to do this, as you well may know, we must address the issues that inhibit this mission. These include factors that lead to low attendance, such as poor health, low incomes forcing young men and women to help sustain a household, and the general idea that an education is not always a worthwhile pursuit for a young woman. The real aim here is to help these families move to a higher standing of living by taking the education of their young ones seriously; to help them understand that education is the greatest ticket to a better life.

Before Propel began working with the schools, water was hard to come by. Many of the kids would miss school because of the long treks to fetch water. Propel directly addressed this issue by building wells at seven schools that we work with. Now, kids and the community as a whole have a place nearby to fetch water. This has accomplished several things:

1)      The number of instances of kids facing symptoms of dehydration has drastically dropped.

2)      The number of poor-drinking-water-related illnesses has dropped to nearly zero.

3)      Children and adults alike are starting to see the schools as they should be seen – as a central place of the community.

*All data referenced above comes directly from our staff in Uganda who scrupulously track these metrics.

Don’t take that last point too lightly. It demonstrates how we can address those other factors that lead to low attendance that were mentioned earlier. All of this goes to show how our work is helping the average Ugandan move to a higher income level, all with the foresight that by putting the impetus on education, the move upward will be an exponential one. This is just one of the many examples of Propel addressing problems that act as barriers to growth and wellness.

My goal here was to help you understand how misinformation (or the lack of information) can distort our view of the world and make it increasingly difficult to solve otherwise very addressable problems. By using the latest research and more accurate models, we can begin to see the world from a more accurate and helpful perspective. We can then face the problems and issues head on and get consistently better outcomes, as Propel continues to do month after month, year after year.

Thank you for reading this blog post and for your continued support of our mission and of the kids we serve. If you’d like to find out more about how you can contribute, please visit our Take Action page. Even the smallest of donations helps push the students and communities we serve toward more outstanding futures.

Until next time,

Drew vonEhrenkrook

Welcome to Our New Site!

I am so excited to welcome you to the Propel Foundation’s new website! There have been many hours put into its development and launching. Thanks to all involved.

In this blog area you will be finding blogs written by me and other contributors on a variety of topics. We will all try and keep our posts coming to you on a regular basis. There are so many stories to share and people to hear from. Our focus will be on “Community”: a gathering of people with a common purpose and a desire to work together on a variety of projects. We will explore: What it looks like, the people that make it happen, and movement forward. Right now, Propel’s community is in the Luuka District in Uganda. We have an incredible group of schools and villages that we support and also an Elders Program made up of several men and women. Support for these groups comes in the form of education, medical/health education, and projects that benefit the schools and villages.

On this website, you will see many faces and many examples of what we are doing in Uganda. You will read or have read that Propel started in 2014 and has grown in terms of  programs initiated and people impacted in the years since then. How? The people of Uganda and our teams from the U.S., that go to Uganda three times a year, who work side by side to create sustainability with each and every program. Those involved are working, planning, talking, sharing, laughing and most of all, enjoying community!

Take care and come visit again!

Mickey