Joyce And John Wanda On Self-Sustaining Education And Healthcare Initiatives Uplifting Communities
John and Joyce Wanda are the co-founders of REACH for Uganda, a non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering children in Uganda through quality education and basic healthcare.
Originally from Uganda, John and Joyce immigrated to the U.S. in 1996, and by 2004, had established REACH with the mission of helping Ugandan children reach their full potential. Through REACH, they have built two primary schools, two medical clinics, and offer over 500 annual scholarships for students in Uganda.
Their work has garnered widespread recognition, including honors from Rotary International, the US Embassy in Uganda, and Arlington County, VA.
Both John and Joyce are advocates for education and equality; Joyce, one of the first girls in her village to attain a college education, continues to champion the advancement of girls and women. Together, John and Joyce have received national and international praise for their impact, which has been featured in The Washington Post and other media.
John and Joyce discuss Why accessible education and healthcare are essential for elevating disadvantaged communities and how social entrepreneurs can design solutions to create community driven intergenerational impacts.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Indio Myles] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background(s) and what led to you working in social entrepreneurship and community driven impact?
[John Wanda] - We currently live in Arlington, Virginia, but both Joyce and I were born in Uganda. We moved to the U.S. in 1996, and we have lived here for twenty-eight years or so, taking care of ourselves and our children.
The work we do in Uganda was inspired by what we found here in America. Both of us grew up in very poor villages in Uganda, with very basic access to education. There was no running water or electricity. We were moving everywhere, collecting and cooking our own food, and we did not know what a quality education looked like.
Fortunately, both our parents did their best to send each of us to school. I was able to study in the village schools, attend secondary school, go on to university, and eventually, I found a job in Uganda.
The only schools we knew were the poor schools in Uganda, but the moment we came to the U.S., we saw what schools could be; schools that had teachers, good buildings, chairs and desks.
They had books, computers and even lunch at school. Those are things we had never experienced in our motherland of Uganda. Immediately, for us, it became an obsession. How could we take some of what we had found in our new community to the Ugandan kids who have never seen a good school before?
We eventually reached out to the school, the people we worked with, and our immediate community in Arlington, asking them to support us in bringing quality education to our home country. Mobilising our community from the U.S. in Uganda, we began building a school named the Arlington Academy of Hope in honour of the community in Arlington.
We modelled it directly on the Arlington Traditional Elementary School. We got teachers, curriculum, and books from Arlington and libraries. Volunteers came with us to Uganda to work on this school.
Over the years, we have built this amazing program in Uganda with two primary schools. The kids then go on to secondary school and tertiary programs, which have copied a lot of what we found here in America.
A lot of donations are from the U.S., but other parts of the world have also supported us. Lots of people have contributed to this program, and we're really pleased with its impact on the people of Uganda and how it has built relationships between many people around the world.
[Joyce Wanda] - I was born and raised in Uganda in a small district neighbouring Kenya, the Namisindwa District. I went to school in the local villages and eventually joined secondary school. I then moved away from home to attend a boarding school for girls. I progressed from there to high school and then university.
This was not the norm when I was growing up. Very few girls, especially in my village, progressed past high school at all. It was an honour for me, especially with the support of my parents, given the fact that we really didn't have much.
My father sold every piece of land he had and promised me that for as long as I wanted he would do everything he could to take me to school. That was the drive behind my desire to go further, and it pushed me to university. I was the first girl in my village to do so.
I eventually met John, we married, and then an opportunity came up to travel to the United States. We won what we call a ‘Diversity Visa’ lottery.
However, throughout our time here, we didn't forget where we had come from. We were always thinking about the people we left behind, especially the children and girls in the villages. We wanted to do something to help them progress and access education, because we knew if they had that opportunity, the chances of them escaping poverty were real.
We were able to establish a basic scholarship to support the students in our villages (before eventually building schools). We built one in John's village (Bumwalukani) and then another in the village where I grew up (Butinduyi). We ensure that there is gender equity in our programming, giving an equal opportunity to both boys and girls to thrive. We mentor the girls to make sure they can compete at the same level as their brothers.
As we strayed beyond education, we realised how important it was to be able to support the community in other ways. We established a microfinance and health program, where we support the local people in getting access to both healthcare and loans so they can support themselves.
Could you go more in-depth on the education, healthcare, or economic initiatives that you're delivering through your organisation REACH for Uganda?
[John Wanda] - REACH for Uganda focuses on four areas: education, healthcare, community development, and entrepreneurship. We support primary school education with our two primary schools, which are now the best in the region. They provide excellent high-quality education outcomes and empower kids to be whatever they can want to be.
We focus on early grade reading and make sure the kids are developed as whole, well-rounded individuals. Instead of learning from rote and being pumped with information as a lot of local schools do, we give them good premises, food, and uniforms. They look good, are high readers, and do everything they want - everything we see kids in America doing.
Once we began building our schools, we realised we needed to provide healthcare for these kids, so we built two health care clinics near each of our schools. The clinics provide community healthcare, which people were in dire need for as there were no medical clinics in the area. Our schools were revolutionary through providing high quality education, and our clinics are the same.
We're also empowering the community, giving the people of these villages the ability to earn a good income, improve their schools, communicate better, and advocate for themselves. We’re supporting them to grow as a society.
We have provided, for example, solar lights in the nearby town of Kikholo in Bududa, that allows businesses to thrive and continue working at night. We have provided microfinance loans to people, especially women, who need basic access to finance so they can run businesses. We are providing access to clean water in the communities, which previously had to be fetched from rivers.
We're hoping that these projects being in these areas can make a difference, even if they’re small changes. We buy food locally from the people there, giving them an income. We model behaviour, advocacy, and activities, making sure people recognise that this is their area, only they can make it work for them.
The initiatives we introduce in these communities are meant to help them grow organically, to take care of themselves. We ensure that people realise the importance of going to school and are able to take their kids to school, ensuring eventually there's overall development in the region.
[Joyce Wanda] - We borrowed a lot of what was working in education in Arlington and then we combined it with Uganda’s best education. These models were used in our school to make something that is a little bit of America and Uganda as well.
When we bring volunteers, they're able to support the models we take over there, but we also promote what is already existing in the community. For instance, if there is a cultural aspect to the way students learn, that is celebrated. We maintain that and make sure we encourage our culture to stand out.
When we first started the schools, a lot of the local teachers didn't have enough training to be able to carry out the education we were looking for. We had to hire a lot of teachers from far away, in the city Kampala, and attract them to come into the villages. But as time goes on, we trained the students to make sure they can then acquire the education to be able to graduate as nurses and teachers, to then come back and work in the school and run the medical clinic.
That has helped us not just in supplying the nurses and teachers, but now our students who have qualified as nurses, doctors, engineers, and plumbers are able to come back and work in all these areas within our community.
Beyond where we live, we engage the local community to ensure that these children have support and mentorship. We developed a program that we call the Sponsorship with the local residents in the U.S. We link a sponsor to a student, and they write to each other to learn more about each other’s culture. Each one gets value from this exchange. The sponsor is not just supporting the student but getting to see this young kid grow up and become a professional teacher or doctor.
Health is a big challenge, especially in the rural community. For so many mothers, it was very difficult for them to get any kind of access to medical care. Our clinics (especially the one with a maternity section), has helped to stop mothers dying in childbirth and has granted people access to quality care right in the village they come from.
We make sure our volunteers engage with the local community. We have been privileged to have so many of the board members serving as volunteers and they keep the organisation going. They also commit in terms of mentoring the staff and fundraising to ensure our programs develop and grow.
We are grateful to a board of directors that work with us from REACH for Uganda's side as well as our donors and volunteers who ensure that the organisation goes on and is financially viable.
When you're designing REACH's initiatives, how do you design the programs to ensure that they create a sustainable long-term impact?
[John Wanda] - It starts from the bottom. We make sure all of our programs are first discussed and shared with the local community. A lot of ideas are suggested by them.
We prioritise ideas based on the available resource, but we make sure the original sourcing of the ideas come from the local community. They need to own these projects. They need to feel that this is going to have the biggest impact on their lives so that once they are implemented, the people embrace them. The people of Uganda are the ones who wanted us to deliver a better quality education to them, so they are very protective of this.
The second element is to make sure the programs are not entirely free. The stakeholders, the parents, the kids, each contribute something towards the delivery of these services. For example, the kids pay a percentage of the tuition needed to run the school. If you provide it entirely for free, then people don't feel invested and they take it for granted.
The contribution we ask for is small enough for them to afford but they can also be delivered in multiple ways. If someone doesn't have cash, they can provide labour or food. If they're going to a clinic, we request a contribution towards the medical costs. All of this makes sure the community we are serving feels that this is their program. They have a stake in the program, they protect it from those who want to take it away, and they share whatever they're learning with the community.
We make sure we work in collaboration with the local government, so they see us as a partner in development. We can assure you that even if we went away, these programs would continue because the local people have embraced them so much. They feel invested, and they see the change made to their lives. We're confident our programs will continue.
[Joyce Wanda] - Even for the development of the programs (like mentorship for the girls), it's important most of the ideas are coming from the girls themselves. By asking what works and what is important to them, we are making sure they are voicing their needs. It gives them ownership because they are creating and formulating this work.
As John said, most of the programming is input from the community first, by looking at what is important and what is needed. We have been able to run two primary schools for a long time, but we send all of our students to other secondary schools in the area.
One of the requests from parents has been they wished we could have a secondary school to reach more students. We didn't have the funding at the time, and we could only dream about it. Now we’re able to make it happen.
We're in the process of building a secondary school funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It's not just about us getting the money for the school, but the parents are investing as well by paying a small portion that will go towards buying land. Our donors are also contributing to building the school and facilities for clean water and energy. By getting input from the local community (instead of just giving it to them), they feel partly invested as well.
How have you seen these programs impact the participants and how does it uplift disadvantaged communities or people in the long term?
[John Wanda] - A lot of our impact is immediate; you can see it when you go there. People have embraced the new services and products we have shared with them, and behaviour has been modelled to reflect what good citizens should be doing in their own communities.
The numbers tell the wider story. When we began this program, very few kids from these two villages had actually completed high school. Since our time, no one had had gone on to college. Now, more than 300 kids have graduated from college through the programs we started here.
Every year we graduate 60 kids from college. Some of them have come out as doctors, teachers, engineers, or human resource specialists. Almost every sector of our economy has been touched by the kids who graduate from our program. They are now advocates for their own communities and role models in the area.
We recently formed a Rotary Club because these people now know the value of dedication and how their community can be engaged in these activities. Building the secondary school is only possible because we now have the teachers and staff to run a school like this.
We're grateful to programs like USAID that gave us funding to start these programs, and we're now on the verge of take. They have been accepted across the region and we are inspiring others to learn how to improve their own communities.
We're introducing the best practices that we have seen here in the U.S. and across the world to the local people. We're sending international volunteers to share their experiences with them.
We're opening the eyes of the local community to what is happening outside their own area, and the people are now advocating for themselves because we have taught them what advocacy, assertiveness, and progress looks like.
Every time we go to the local town of Kikholo at night, where we have the solar lights project, you can see the whole town is bright, and people are shopping and dancing happily. Business is booming; you can see the impact immediately.
Incomes are growing, but for me, it’s the sense of achievement. People walk taller and they are happier. They are grateful that this is happening in their community. This is something they want to continue doing on their own. You can see the transformation right in front of your eyes.
[Joyce Wanda] - There are some things that are great and some that could be improved upon. One of the ideas when I was a girl is that you grow up, get married, and there is a dowry that goes along with that.
A lot of parents look forward to their girls getting married because of that dowry. However, there’s value in having girls stay in school, allowing them to both get a career and get married, and it was important that parents understood this.
We had to show that if the girls stay in school, they can still come back and get married without a problem. Of course, the longer girls stay in school, the better ability that girl will have to bring up their child.
The chances of that girl coming back and improving their community is also multiplied. The parents are able to see that, and they see the value in waiting for the girls to pursue school before getting married, allowing them to pursue their careers and not just be housewives, but teachers and doctors.
Our program has supported girls in graduating as lawyers and we have a number that have graduated as teachers, nurses, and doctors as well. We have a nuclear scientist who has completed not just one degree but is on the verge of pursuing a third degree as well. They see that this is all possible if you give them an opportunity to pursue an education.
We also want to make sure these programs are self-sustaining in a way that the people that began as students are now the ones running the programs. They're the ones in the leadership positions. Our Chief Operating Officer, for instance, is a former student. Our Director of Medical Services (who is in charge of our medical clinics) is a graduate of ours.
It is all full circle and there’s a clear transformation happening. The key is not just for them to see that it is happening, but to be part of that change. We've seen these young people given this opportunity coming back and paying it forward, wanting to support one more child in escaping poverty. That has been wonderful to watch happen.
What advice would you give to an aspiring change maker, entrepreneur, or someone who wants to make a difference in the world?
[Joyce Wanda] - The most important thing is to take action.
However little, however small, don’t wait until you have all the plans lined up. Start with what you have, and if you have a passion about doing something, do it right away. Don't wait to plan everything to make an impact. However humble or small you are, every person is capable of making a difference in somebody else's life. Do not underestimate how big that work can grow.
[John Wanda] - Learn about the people, groups or whoever you’re involved with. Learn about them, their background and their history. Don't assume you know everything or that your ideas should change them. Learn from them, live that experience, share things with them, and work with them to make a change.
It's easier when you can do things together rather than pushing your solutions onto someone else. Always make sure that you learn from others, that they accept you, and that you work with them to grow.
