Mission to Uganda: building schools and tackling poverty

This month, Steve Lock, Senior Engagement Worker, and his wife Helen will receive honorary doctorates in mission for their work in building schools and tackling poverty in Uganda. Steve tells us more about about their charity Gulu Mission.

In 2007 I heard a story that broke me.

A story of a war that had been going on for 24 years in Uganda, Africa. A story of an estimated 50,000 children and young people abducted from their homes and forced to fight and kill or be killed, in a senseless war of jealousy. You may remember the Koni2012 campaign which highlighted this still most wanted ICC criminal, Joseph Koni and his LRA army.

For several years prior to this my wife Helen had been visiting a prayer conference in Kampala the Capital of Uganda and had helped start a church in one of the slum areas of the city. When I visited Gulu in the north of Uganda we decided to help build a school in one of the villages close to where Koni has operated. We met a lady and her husband who had built 3 classrooms with 40 children attending.

They didn’t have the resources to staff it so we promised them that we would help those 40 children through their education.

Over the years we have built further classrooms as those children have moved through the school and more children have come in behind them. Currently there are nearly 1000 children.

We have completed the primary and secondary schools and have recently begun building a vocational training centre.

The education system is similar to the UK with exams and league tables and before Covid our school was recognised as the second-best school in Northern Uganda.

Alongside this we have built several water bore holes, as unbelievably the majority of people in the rural north still don’t have access to clean water leading to preventable diseases. We have taken teams on life changing mission trips to visit our projects and help in other areas of need such as health care and evangelisation.

Working with local churches in Gulu we are seeking to impact the still desperate effects of the war. I would hope that we can run a diocesan trip at some point in the coming years.

On Saturday 20th November, Helen and I travel to Nairobi. We have been nominated by our partners in Uganda to receive honorary doctorates in mission. We are incredibly humbled by this.

Please pray for us as we make this trip and the impact this award will have on our charity.

For more information visit www.gulumission.org