Uganda Mission
Background on Uganda Mission –
Crossroads Uganda was our first international mission. It began with a team of twelve in 1999 who, while helping to build a new church building for Mt. Lebanon Church and providing medical assistance through walk-in clinics, established relationships that remain to this day.
One of the twelve came home with a vision to partner with Ugandans to provide Education to the children. From this, the Uganda Call Group emerged.
In 2004 HUMBLE United Methodist Primary School opened, welcoming 67 students from preschool through 4th grade. Over the next few years, additional classroom buildings were completed, allowing the classes to expand through Primary 7 and the population of the school to grow to 250.
In 2007 the pioneer class of HUMBLE UMS graduated from P7. Unfortunately at that time, the Uganda United Methodist Church had not been successful in launching a secondary school. Crossroads is committed to continuing to educate that Pioneer class of 14 students through their secondary and/or vocational education. That trend continued through successive graduating classes, and Crossroads continued to sponsor as many of the graduating students as possible through the efforts of individual sponsors and donors as well as the annual Thanksgiving Day 10K race.
In 2012, due to questionable accounting practices by the East Africa Conference (EAAC) of the United Methodist Church, the UMC General Board of Global Ministries stopped sending project funds to the EAAC. This included HUMBLE School since it is a project of the Uganda United Methodist Church, under the EAAC. With funding no longer able to go to HUMBLE School, the most vulnerable children, who would not be able to attend HUMBLE as it transitioned into a paying school, were identified with the help of former Headmistress Esther Nabwire. Esther chose to leave her position with HUMBLE and continue to work with Crossroads. She facilitated the move of these most vulnerable children still in primary and since that time has managed the oversight and care of those children, as well as the children already in secondary and vocational.
As noted above, many students have completed at least a 2-year certificate program and entered the workforce, in vocations including nursing, catering, fashion and design, agriculture, engineering, hotel management, teaching, accounting, and mechanics.
Currently, Crossroads is not accepting any new students, but focusing on making sure all of the current students can continue their education until they are ready to enter the workforce.
Our commitment is to focus first on these students, encouraging most to follow a vocational track which results in six years post-primary. When that has been achieved we can look beyond to where God is calling us to be present to the children of Uganda.
