The Ugandans were locked down for 84 weeks with no money and their food ran out and they were eating their seeds to stay alive. Many were found dead from starvation in their homes. You don’t hear about it on the News for some reason. I heard about it from the neighbors of the dead people

In the Philippines some crooked politicians pocketed the covid relief money for the poor population in their areas and left them to starve. I saw a friend of mine from Victoria BC who now lived in the Philippines and I saw him on his facebook page, handing out 200 sandwiches a day to starving kids in the streets from his restaurant. He told me what was going on there and I started raising money to help him to feed the poor. Then ex Pat soldiers joined the crusade with him to feed the poor there in a big way and I moved onto Uganda where people were starving and did the same thing there.

Around this time Luc in South Africa, told me there is no chance for self betterment activities in Africa unless you can self sustain the villages because people are fighting against starvation on a daily basis even prior to covid. I flashed back to being a young teenager and watching the news in Canada, where it showed a whole population in an African country starving to death right in front of my face on the TV screen. Babies with extended tummies flashed on the screen to my horror. This was Bangladesh I think and I ran into the kitchen and asked my Mum what she was going to do about it and she screamed “Nothing Karin, I am a single Mother raising 5 children alone and I am overwhelmed”. I started to cry and said “I guess everyone’s overwhelmed, they are filming a whole Country starving to death, tiny babies even. Is everyone too overwhelmed to help them?”. Then I wondered what I was going to do about it and I could think of no solution and I went very dark.

Suddenly 50 years later, when my friend in South Africa told me that fact about Africa, I made a decison and I told him “I’m going to create a model self sustaining village and pay it forward across Africa with armies of trained Volunteers. I soon after meet a Ugandan who immediately agreed that this was what we needed to do and agreed his birth village could be the model village and then he and I joined forces to make it happen.

Early on in the Crusade, two of our Volunteers were killed in a head on car collision near our model village. They were single mothers leaving behind 10 orphans. Suddenly my attention went onto orphans. I knew Martins sister Agnes was raising 12 orphaned grandkids as all her kids and husband had died. I wanted to know about the orphans, how many were there in Wanga Parish and how were they doing? Martin found out there were about 200 orphans in the six villages and 70 of these kids were lucky to eat once a day. The other 130 were OK and living with relatives. I decided to open an orphanage. I told my friend Kim my decision and she told me to contact her friend Marina as she knew she had a dream of one day opening an orphanage. I looked and Marina was my facebook friend and from Africa!! She lived in Michigan and had 13 Dental offices. As soon as I told her my plan she said she would finance it and within a couple of weeks, we had mattresses, bedding, backpacks, food, clothes and the kids were soon after in school with uniforms and books. She later helped to open an NGO and her 13 Dental offices each sent in $300 a month which financed self sustaining the orphanage and helping feed all the orphans in their subcounty of 26 villages.

After three years, the orphanage has now 42 pigs, 750 chickens, 15 acres of rice, 2 acres of sweet potatoes, irrigation equipment, two oxen and two ploughs, sports equipment, school uniforms, school fees for 120 kids because 50 more orphans arrived in Wanga from the mountains of Bubliabi parish that were threatened with floods and mudslides. We have permanently moved them from the danger of living in those mountain villages to the safety of Wanga Parish and they are all also in school.

I personally paid for that bus to go get those kids and about 10 flood victim adults out of danger where they were all sleeping together in a Church and I moved them to Wanga.

Martin did not hesitate one second to take these kids and flood victim families in. He is a total Humanitarian and leader. His father has been his whole life the main visionary person of Wanga Parish, he donated the land for the Primary school and the Churches and now the Secondary School we plan to build.

The orphanage is now the power in that village. Its interesting to talk to these orphans, so many want to be nurses and doctors because their parents died and they want to save people.

Many people have helped me financially because I truly believe we all have that common purpose for Africa and all starving communities in the World. We want them to prosper and have plenty of food and clean water to drink. I think we all know it is a basic human right and so people support this crusade

Also every dime I raise goes to specific projects, to the people in Africa and they send me receipts and photographs and videos, none of it goes to any salary or in my pocket. I have spent all my retirement money on these projects when I couldn’t raise money.