Mepham High reaches out to Uganda

In March, a group of Mepham High School students embarked on a “1,000 Bracelet Campaign,” a fundraiser focusing on Ugandan children who have been kidnapped and killed by Ugandan militant Joseph Kony, who has led an open rebellion against the Ugandan government since 1987.

Four weeks have passed, and the initiative has not let up — far from it. Though the students were first inspired by “Kony 2012,” a worldwide online movement calling for the arrest of Kony by year’s end, the group is now directing its fundraising efforts to provide education for Ugandan children. The students have allied themselves with a nonprofit, non-governmental organization called LEAD Uganda.

“Kony was more of the introduction to what was taking place,” said Jennifer Carne, a Mepham assistant principal who has helped advise the students. “Our kids have taken a greater interest in helping kids who are affected for a variety of reasons — not just Kony’s victims.”

Stephen Shames, the founder of LEAD Uganda — an acronym for Locate, Educate, Achieve and Dream — came to Mepham on April 18 to talk with roughly 50 students and let them know how they could help Uganda.

Shames, a photojournalist who lives in Brooklyn, discussed his first trip to Uganda in 2000, when he was on assignment, working on a story about AIDS. During his visit, he befriended three orphaned siblings, 10-year-old Sunya, 3-year-old Joseph and 11-month-old Sarah. After returning home, he said, he “couldn’t get them out of my mind.” Shames returned to Uganda two years later, and paid for the three children to attend a local village school.

In 2004, he started LEAD Uganda, registering with the Internal Revenue Service to become a nonprofit organization. Since its founding, it has sent 112 Ugandan children to top schools, and the organization sponsors a dozen students who are currently enrolled in universities. “So they’re literally sitting in schools next to [students whose parents] are vice presidents of the country, cabinet ministers or who own businesses,” Shames said. “The idea is that they will go back to their villages and start businesses, become entrepreneurs and really do something to help their country.”