This trip to Uganda was incredible. We always meet lovely, kind, welcoming people everywhere we go, but we were surprised by how deeply warm and welcoming and open-hearted the people we met in Uganda are—it was such a gift to spend time in this culture!
We were also impressed by the spiritual fortitude we witnessed from the folks we were able to connect with more personally. The needs these healthcare providers are contending with are enormous, and yet there is an equal measure of joy, hope, determination, and gratitude. In the face of such significant needs and so few resources, people time and time again expressed feeling blessed. Seeing that kind of joy and gratitude in the face of these adversities has left a deep and lasting impression on me.
The question I am asking now is, "How can we do more to help?" We are already planning a return visit for 2026, but that feels too long to wait, knowing how significant our new friends' needs are.
Right now, I'm struggling against an intense sense of urgency. When your mission is to serve nurses, midwives, and other healthcare providers, each area of need has life-and-death implications. It feels incredibly heavy to be aware of the "Grand Canyon" sized challenges and my natural tendency is to want big, sweeping solutions.
But what we need is a "Grand Canyon" approach. The Grand Canyon was not blasted open in a day or a year or even a decade. It was carved by flowing water year after year for millennia. The consistent flow is what created the deep and lasting impact. We can't blast away the needs of our Ugandan colleagues in one fell swoop, but we can work to create a consistent flow of support that, over time, will help them change their landscape.
Our first step will be to work through the question we're asking above: what can we as Nurses Heart to Heart do directly? Who can we partner with to provide more help more consistently? What local resources can we support and invest in? And how do we identify the investments that will make the greatest impact? How do we "triage" the needs we're seeing and the opportunities they present?
We're already collecting data from the two hospitals where Nurses Heart to Heart was able to donate fetal dopplers to see how these dopplers affect their infant mortality rates. And we're beginning to explore if and how we might provide virtual trainings to supplement in-person trips. Only 15% of the population of Uganda has personal internet access and even then, it can be unreliable or too expensive to use. But there are options!
Next Monday, May 12th, is International Nurses Day and it starts our month-long celebration of Nurses Heart to Heart's favorite "holiday," which we celebrate by raising money to support nursing education in the countries where NHTH serves.
This year, we will be providing tuition scholarships for nursing students in the Ravens Ministries Youth Empowerment Program in Kampala! We loved meeting Vicky and Joel (pictured above) at our training last month. Supporting the education of the next generation of Ugandan nurses and midwives is a great start to our "Grand Canyon" approach!
To close, I want to express my profound gratitude to you, our donors and friends, for your support as we have begun this work in Uganda—your generosity makes it all possible. This trip has challenged us to enlarge our vision and has encouraged us to stretch to meet it. We are beyond grateful that you're here to be a part of it all!
