Leaders of Distinction

Looking through my photos, it seems like the entire trip is about babies.

Orphanages are certainly compelling visual symbols of what Niteo is about, but on Friday we joined together with our Ugandan partners to celebrate another facet of our mandate.

Leaders of Distinction -- formerly known as Kids Helping Kids -- is a school based program serving secondary school students. Its goal is to empower and facilitate community-based projects partnering higher economic-status students with less advantaged ones. The students work as teams to identify social or community issues that they can change. They then develop and implement these programs and track their successes.

On Friday, members of the community and the schools came together to celebrate those students whose programs were most successful. We at Niteo were honored to join distinguished guests from the Ministry of Education as well as business and community leaders in an afternoon gala of speeches and celebrations. Some of the achievements are incredible regardless of whether they were student led or not; all the achievements are worthy of our praise and respect.

Much of what we have seen so far has been about hope and the future -- how things will be better "later on". It was wonderful to see something that is great NOW. These students are truly the future leaders of Uganda, and we salute them.