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East Africa NGO
East Africa NGO
Carol Adams
For more than 30 years Carol Adams has fed, housed, educated and cared for orphans and vulnerable children in Fort Portal in Western Uganda. Many of the children were weakened by the HIV virus but were supported for two decades by anti-viral drugs provided by USAID and its PEPFAR program.
But those programs have been frozen by President Trump, putting the lives of millions in East Africa and around the world in grave danger.
I recently spoke with Carol about her YesUganda.org program and the impact of the USAID freeze.
East Africa NGO is sponsored by TeaminFaith.org
Music by Dale Enstrom
Hello, and welcome to East Africa NGO podcast. I am your host, Patrick Hill. This program is sponsored by Team in Faith, supporting women, orphans, and vulnerable children in Uganda and elsewhere in East Africa since 2012. For more than 30 years, Carol Adams has fed, housed, educated, and otherwise cared for orphans and vulnerable children in Fort Portal in western Uganda. Many of the children were weakened by the HIV virus but were supported by antiviral drugs provided by USAID and its PEPFAR program. But those programs have been paused for review by President Trump's executive order, putting the lives of millions in the region who rely on the drugs in grave danger. I spoke recently with Carol in Uganda and learned more about her Yes Uganda program and the impact of the U.S. aid freeze. Joining me now from Fort Portal via WhatsApp is Carol Adams. Carol, good evening to you in Uganda.
SPEAKER_01:Good evening to you too, Pat.
SPEAKER_00:I wanted to have a conversation with you about your mission work there with Yes Uganda. You have been in Uganda for nearly 30 years.
SPEAKER_01:It will be 30 years at the end of December this year.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And tell me how you got there for the first time. What led you to Uganda in the first place?
SPEAKER_01:It was basically a spiritual calling. I was working in Maui, Hawaii, training horses and teaching riding. But I felt like I should do more in the world. And one day at church, I just got a strong, strong feeling. mental vision that there were children in Africa that needed me. I then applied to many mission agencies, but they all turned me down. They said I was too old and I did not have enough education. So I ended up coming on my own at the end of 1995. So at that point I was under Church of Uganda anglican church and started the child care outreach i was with the church until 2004 and in between 2004 and 2005 i broke away from the church and formed an ngo where i would have a little bit more decision-making abilities and it was at the same time frame that i started uh considering building the rescue home as well as a large hostel that we're here now.
SPEAKER_00:And how has that evolved over the years? I mean, you've provided scholarships for orphans and children to go to school. You've provided some health assistance for HIV-positive children. So it's really grown into quite a program.
SPEAKER_01:It's large, yes. I've got now 1,800 graduates that are all over the place doing different jobs and different occupations, but I've continued working with kids. I have only about 200 right now because school fees and all have gotten a lot more costly, and yet the fees coming in have actually dropped off. But no, we're continuing with that. And in the same timeframe, I built a home for HIV positive children, children born with AIDS and had been sometimes right out on the streets, sometimes with elderly people that had no way to take care of them and many other really horrific situations.
SPEAKER_00:Your NGO is known as Yes Uganda. How do you raise money for to afford the school fees for students? You find sponsors.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I have a website and I also have just slowly built friendships throughout the whole world throughout over the years. The hostel actually has increased my donor base because I've got people from all over the world that stop here. And when they see the kids at the home and the situation here, many have stepped in. So now I have sponsors from all over the world.
SPEAKER_00:Tell us the website for listeners who are hearing this around the world. What is the website? What's the best way to reach you, to learn about you, and to make an online donation, let's say?
SPEAKER_01:The Yes website is quite easy. If you just can remember Yes Uganda, go yesuganda.org. It will get you to the website. And there it has also the donor page that would explain that. And it also has my email and such where they can ask me any question they want to ask me directly.
UNKNOWN:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:How has Yes Uganda been facilitating or working alongside the United States and its U.S. aid program over the past couple of decades?
SPEAKER_01:Well, when I was first here, the aid situation was horrific. I've sat on mud floors holding hands of children as they die. It was horrible. But in about I think it was around 2003, PEPFAR and USAID came and it was miraculous. So, so many were saved. We would not have as many orphans now if they had been here earlier. but the orphans, because now the PEPFAR was also providing drugs to prevent ladies from passing HIV onto their babies. So it was such a huge boost to the country and I'm sure to the world when they came in, but it was miraculous to say the least. People that were close to death came around once they got put on those drug regime.
SPEAKER_00:And those who were afflicted and stricken and died by AIDS, that pretty much wiped out a whole generation of Ugandans. It's like they're the elderly, they're the very young, but this sort of middle-aged group of people has just sort of disappeared in the population there.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. That is why we have so many orphans. And the elderly cannot manage to take care of all of them as much as they try.
SPEAKER_00:So now, given the new administration that has come in in Washington since January, they've made some rather rash and unimaginable decisions just to... just to slash, discontinue, and terminate USAID spending. How has that complicated life and made things more difficult for the orphans and operators such as yourself?
SPEAKER_01:So far, so good with the ARVs. Uganda's desperately trying to keep it going with their own manufacturing of them. But people are dying at the refugee camps. There's panic in the general population. The doctors are saying, try to hang on. We're trying our best to make sure the drugs are being made. We're trying to see where we can get the drugs. But it happened so suddenly that the country can't really catch up because there's a huge number that were on the drugs. So right now, we're on a holding pattern, not knowing what the answer is going to be. And because... The drugs are drugs that can't just be bought. You can't bring it in through the country. Otherwise, I try to get some in India or even China, but it's not legal to bring in prescription drugs that way. So as much as people have donated to help me bring in drugs, we cannot. It's not legal. So we're just on a holding pattern right now.
SPEAKER_00:Have you seen any signals? Are you hearing from any USAID people that there's likely to be at least a crack in the door to allow funding for the drugs to continue?
SPEAKER_01:It's hard to say. I mean, you probably know more than I do what's happening on this end. I do know what I've read on the news about this Mr. Musk saying that... USAID was extremely corrupt and had many bad directions. But I wonder, he cut it so suddenly, they didn't really even have time to study what USAID was doing. But that's my opinion, and I'll keep quiet from here on such. But at any rate, no, we don't know anything on this end. My only news is what I get from the different news things that I punch in here at the computer. Yes. Nothing was good. There's a lot of people that are unhappy, but the thing is they're unhappy about many, many things. And that worries me because that puts the USAID thing kind of on a back burner because they're unhappy with many, many other things by what the news is showing me.
SPEAKER_00:just came as quite a shock to the system and to millions and millions of Americans when the new administration just put the ax to it earlier this year because it had such bipartisan support. Now we're just waiting for the Democrats and Republicans to find that common ground once again and to restore it, even if it means defying the new president.
SPEAKER_01:I really wish they would. I really wish they would. I have been more active on Facebook comments than I've ever been in my life, but I'm trying to keep my comments polite.
SPEAKER_00:So for the children that you have, they are currently being taken care of, but when you look down the line, maybe three months or six months, it's hard to say just what can happen under these situations, under this current situation.
SPEAKER_01:I'm really worried for my children that are on what they call third-line ARVs. If a third-line ARV taker discontinues even for two weeks, there's no saving their life. They will die. You cannot restart even if it's two weeks later you get the medicine back. It's too late. And we've got three little kids now. young ones, five and seven year olds, that are third line, that the government begged us to take in just at the end of last year. We took them in, we got them nutritionally back in shape, we got them started, they're looking good. If their medicine is stopped, they die. It's been keeping me awake nights, I hate to say it, but it has. It's very hard for me to understand from this end what is happening. And if there's anything, any suggestions on anything I should do from this end, please let me know, whether it's letters or anything besides my crumbling that I've been doing on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Carol, I want to applaud you for your many years of diligence and support for the people of Uganda, the children of Uganda. It's... I've visited you at your home there, the rescue house, and you've shown me the alumni of students who have gone through, have gone on to great things in the country and outside the country. And it's really a testament to what you have done over the years to build your program there.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you, and I feel privileged and grateful to be here. I love the people. I love this country. I love the children. God has given me many, many children when I physically could not have any of my own, and it's been really a blessing to me. So thank you very much, Pat.
SPEAKER_00:That was Carol Adams, Executive Director of Yes Uganda, serving children in need in western Uganda for more than 30 years. To learn more about the program and to support its work, visit yesuganda.org. Thank you for listening today. I'll be back again soon to introduce you to another individual and organization that is lifting lives and raising hopes of our brothers and sisters in East Africa. You can learn more about Team in Faith and support our programs at teaminfaith.org. For East Africa NGO, I'm Patrick Hill.