"My Daughter is at the University"

In Uganda when a parent gives birth to a child, their name changes, and they are referred to as the mother of… (their child’s name) so Mama Latifah is the mother of Latifa and Hakim.

Latifah is one of the Action in Africa (AIA) University Scholarship students that has been part of the program since her primary school level, she is likely to graduate this year. In this blog post, we spoke to Mama Latifah in order to give our readers some perspective on how the work of AIA impacts the parents of the children that are supported.

“My name is Sarah Nantongo, a widowed single mother of Latifah (23) and Hakim(18). Both my children are on the Action in Africa scholarship program.” Mama Latifah's Children were some of the first students to receive funding from Action in Africa. Latifah started out on the primary scholarship in 2011 and so did her brother Hakim.

Hakim is now in Senior six, which is his final high school class, and Latifah is in her final year of University and has been one of the first students to benefit from the University scholarship program of Action in Africa.

We asked Mama Latifah how much the AIA Scholarship program has helped her, “The scholarship program has really, really, really helped me with these kids, I am all they have and it would be very difficult to take them through school without the support of AIA’s scholarship program, being a widow” Mama Latifah further expressed her immense gratitude for the program.

She reechoed the fact that she is a widow and her work may not always be enough to put food on the table as well as educate her children despite wishing for this to be the case, with AIA’s scholarship program assisting her to overcome the major financial limitations like her children’s tuition, she is better placed to take care of her family as well as meet other basic needs for her and her children.

“My daughter is at the university” Mama Latifah made this statement over ten times in our interview with her, you could feel both the pride and relief she felt. Pride because her daughter was now set to finish her education and dream bigger than her mother could have imagined, and relief, because she has more than a sponsor in Action in Africa, she has a reliable friend that helps her go through the toughest challenges in her life.

I asked what she would like for her daughter to do after university. Mama Latifah said, “when they come back to the community I wish they can also be like you (AIA), how you help us, you should talk to them when they come back to the community, I want the children to have the same sense of humanitarianism.” Her desire as a mother and member of the community is for her children to understand the opportunity they got but also to pay it forward in kind, helping people like them.

Mama Latifah (right) with her son Kezala Hakim (left) who is in AIA’s Secondary Scholarship Program.