Waka Waka (Do it! Do it!)

So about our projects... I had this idea. At the last school that we went to, the girls had a TON of questions, and they wrote them all down and sent them up to the front to us. But there was no way to be able to reply to all of them... So I had an idea- what if we created an email address that girls could send their questions to, email them back, and then also make a blog with relevant questions and answers that all the girls could look at? I thought about it for awhile, just kinda going back and forth, should i, should i not... But then I just brought it up at a team meeting, and everyone thought it was a way good idea. Huh. I don't want to sound prideful or anything, but this was like... an idea that I'm really proud of! It has the potential to help a lot of girls that we aren't able to get access to, and to start to change some things. There are so many myths and hardships that the girls have to deal with that are COMPLETELY unecessary. Like genital mutilation (yes... we have run into that a lot. really sad.), not being able to take painkillers during menstration, not being able to say "no" to older adults who want sex, all these things that the girls think they're not allowed to do... and they are! And we want them to know that! So the blog site is ptbag-uganda.blogspot.com. (ptbag=proud to be a girl, unfortunately, "proudtobeagirl.blogspot.com" was already taken. dumb). Yesterday we met with a contact who is a woman with a journalism background who was interested in starting a blog about local issues... She is one of the most intelligent and positive people... I have probably ever met. Her name is Elizabeth, and I love her! She's going to help us with the blog while we're out of country. We still plan on working on the blog while we're gone, but its good to have someone with a local perspective and access to the Youth Outreach Management. I'm really excited for where this is going to go! Me and Wilson went to schools today to try and schedule more of them for the PTBAG program... but almost all of them are doing exams this week, and can't schedule us until school starts back up in September... :( so we only have one more proud to be a girl meeting on Friday, and then we're done. :( I'm really bummed, that we were only able to go to 4 schools. Hopefully we can get the word out on the blog, so that we will have some work to do with the project. Also, today we met with Francis from Happy Child International, and we just talked logistics about the program... We are going to try and get him a fundly website, because he wants to construct a recreation center to hold the meetings for the kids. He has BIG dreams, and really low funds, but he is one of the most genuinely caring men i have met. He really cares about these kids, and is putting everything he has into this organization, which is really rare in Uganda. A sad thing, is that the "non-profit" industry is one of the biggest in Uganda, because everyone knows how many problems are here, and they really just set up these programs to make profit. So there aren't a lot of programs that you can really count on to put the time and resources into the projects rather than to just stick the money in their pocket... which is really sad. So I'm really exicted about this project also. We have a TON of fundraising to do, and there's no way that we are going to get it all done by the time we leave, but we want to be able to get as far as we can.