Photos from AIA Gratitude Dinner with Chinobay.

It's always exciting to be at The Center and see the impact of our collective efforts in Nakuwadde, but our most recent trip was special. AIA has experienced significant growth this year, and our visit at the end of May provided the perfect opportunity for Amber and me, our longest-tenured staff members, to bond with our new UG Team staff, align ourselves, and rejuvenate in preparation for tackling bigger goals in the second half of this year. We have numerous plans in store for our UG and US-based communities. We hope you'll join us on this journey, follow along, and invite a friend to witness where we've been and where we're headed next. Here's our last six months in 60 seconds!

Education is the foundation for a happy, healthy life, but it’s difficult to focus on learning when there’s a lack of basic medical services. AIA isn’t a medical organization, but we are a community-led nonprofit. So, we were eager to help The Center’s visitors after so many mothers expressed the need for more accessible healthcare services in Nakuwadde.

Since our last update, spring has arrived, bringing with it warmer days and a wealth of exciting developments at Action in Africa. Our dedicated teams on both sides of the Atlantic have been diligently focused on enhancing operations and refining communication channels to better serve our cherished Nakuwadde community. In Uganda, we are thrilled to report that David Masiko, our newly appointed Country Director introduced in our previous newsletter, has seamlessly assumed his role and hit the ground running. Leading our on-the-ground team of 17 individuals, David has been instrumental in orienting five new university interns, expanding our staff through new hires, and even officiating a memorable Spelling Bee event.

There are dozens of women we admire in the AIA community, and if we shared each of their stories this email would be very, very long. So we've decided to share a little bit about one woman in particular, Nabulime Gloria. Gloria is the first (but hopefully not the last), to embark on an exciting new journey with Action in Africa, one that will see her transition from being an Action in Africa student to an Action in Africa employee.

Drumroll, please!!! Please allow us to introduce you to David Masiko, who now joins our team as the new Action In Africa Country Director. David holds a Master’s Degree in Human Rights Law, and a post-graduate diploma in project planning and management. His career spans more than 19 years, and his most recent accomplishments include working as the Country Representative for the Against Malaria Foundation and as a consultant for the International Federation of Red Cross Societies. He is an Organization and Programme Development Specialist. We sat down for an interview to get to know him better. (PS: He is a really cool person)

I once heard someone say that, "January is for dreamers and February is for doers." Well...we did a lot of dreaming (or in our case planning) in January, and now we're hard at work implementing all we've dreamed. This month we will welcome a new Country Director, dig in with our new Board of Directors, and grow with our expanding teams both in Uganda and the United States.

If you recall, in our first blog post from this series featuring the Action in Africa scholarship program, we discussed the need to create a sustainable humanitarian effort. Our mission is to empower people within the community to be self-sustaining. One of the best ways to do that is to inspire the students in the scholarship program to understand the importance of social work. This story represents the full circle of the AIA scholarship program.