By Chelsea Clinton, NBC News Special Correspondent

KAMPALA, Uganda – For more than 30 years, Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have worked to help victims of the long Sudanese Civil War and Ugandans seeking refuge from the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Kony’s LRA has conscripted tens of thousands of boys and girls as soldiers and sex slaves and murdered tens of thousands of people.  Sister Rosemary is arguably the person who has done the most to help Kony’s victims recover and rebuild their lives.

In 2002, Sister Rosemary founded the St. Monica’s School and Tailoring Centre in Gulu, Uganda, her hometown, to teach literacy and vocational skills, such as tailoring.  Since opening, St. Monica’s has trained more than 2,000 girls who have escaped from the LRA and Kony. She said a major goal of the school is to give the girls and young women back the “dignity” and “self-respect” that Kony and the LRA took away.   

Now Sister Rosemary has turned her attention to another goal: helping people in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan hear with the help of Starkey Hearing Foundation.

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Due to a combination of factors, including a limited awareness that deafness can be treated and a lack of sufficient medical care, there are millions of people in the developing world and thousands in Uganda alone, with hearing problems that go untreated, but who could be helped by simple hearing aids.  Sister Rosemary says she knows hundreds of people in Northern Uganda and thousands throughout Uganda and South Sudan who struggle with hearing loss.    

“These are people who have resigned. They think they can never hear again and people have put them aside,” Sister Rosemary told me. She said helping them get hearing aids “brings them hope and helps them have a better future.”

Hearing aids
I recently met Sister Rosemary in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. She had brought more than 100 men, women and children from Northern Uganda to Kampala to see Bill Austin, founder of the Starkey Hearing Foundation, and his team. 

Starkey Hearing Technologies is a U.S.-based hearing aid company started in 1967 and currently one of the world’s largest suppliers of hearing aids around the globe. Austin launched the foundation in 1984 with the mission to ensure that people everywhere, particularly children, are properly diagnosed and appropriately treated for their hearing loss.  

Hearing loss challenges more than 60 million children around the world, according to the Starkey Foundation, most of whom do not have access to the hearing devices and care that can help them lead healthy, productive lives. The Starkey Hearing Foundation fits and gives more than 100,000 hearing aids annually.

Austin explained how his company gave root to his foundation, “I did the business side so we could provide hearing aids to the people who could afford it -- so that we would have the leverage and the ability to give hearing to the people who couldn't.”

The foundation’s work goes beyond handing out hearing aid devices to treating ear diseases. “I couldn’t stand to send these kids away with sick ears. So, we started giving medicine to all these kids, showing them how to use it, talking to their families and their school about it,” Austin explained. He added that they’ve also started sending more speech therapists out into the field all over the world.

Power of a smile
It was remarkable to watch Starkey give the gift of hearing for the first time to young children, as well as men and women of all ages. It was equally remarkable watching Sister Rosemary talk to everyone she brought with her with such calm reassurance, in at least six different languages during that one day in Kampala, and to listen to her talk about her work with such joy and conviction.  

A smile “is a great weapon,” she said as she laughed. She said that she can, “never imagine being done” with her work because there will always be more to help. She added that Kony and others are still “trying to keep people – especially – girls, down and afraid.”

For Austin’s part, he explained the rewards of their work.

“It's like giving someone a birthright when you give them hearing. It's like connecting them to life itself when you see the smile come across their face when they hear sound,” said Austin. “To hear their mother’s voice, to hear someone say I love you, just to hear words. A lot of the children have no vocabulary because they haven't heard, they have to develop speech. This is what helps them be all they can be.”

The smiles I saw in Kampala were a clear testament to Austin’s mission and to Sister Rosemary’s determination. And, as Sister Rosemary said, a smile is a good weapon against the LRA and others who want a different, bleaker future for Uganda.

Chelsea Clinton is an NBC News Special Correspondent. She recently traveled with her father, former President Bill Clinton, to Uganda as part of their work with the Starkey Hearing Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. As a member of CGI, the Starkey Hearing Foundation has pledged to give 1 million hearing aids to people and children in need in the developing world by 2020.

See more of Clinton's reporting: 

• Elephant population dwindles as demand for ivory grows
• Cell phones could 'completely change the livelihood of many Kenyans'
• 'Building Tomorrow' - one school at a time in Uganda
• College program inspires young inmates

 

KAMPALA, Uganda – The Building Tomorrow Academy of Gita, about an hour outside of Uganda’s capital city of Kampala, is an amazing example of what can be accomplished when local communities and international organizations work together toward innovative solutions to educational challenges.  

 
While in Uganda last week, I met the dynamic tag team of George Srour, the American founder and “chief dreamer,” and Joseph Kalisa, the Ugandan country director, behind the school in Gita, as well as seven other Building Tomorrow “academies” in Uganda.
 
Building Tomorrow’s mission in Uganda is to do more than just build one-room cookie-cutter school houses. So far they have built eight “academies” – each with seven classrooms and space for up to 325 elementary school students.
 
And the best part is that schools like the one in Gita are built with robust local involvement: the school's surrounding communities help build them and the government promises to pay teacher salaries and ongoing operational costs after construction is complete.
 
The result is a real public- civil society partnership that is showing real results – and clearly making a difference.    

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School project turns into dream
Srour started BT in 2005, the same year he graduated from the College of William & Mary in Virginia.   
 
The inspiration for BT grew out of a visit to Uganda and then a holiday fundraising campaign Srour spearheaded during his senior year at William and Mary called “Christmas in Kampala.” The campaign raised more than $45,000 for the construction of a new school in the capital city. 
 
As Srour told me, he realized in his final months of college that raising money was necessary, but not sufficient to fundamentally change education in Uganda, a country with about 50 percent of the population under 15, according to the CIA World Factbook. He realized they needed to do more.  
 
It is a place in which Srour has no family ties, but a clear calling. 
 
When I asked Kalisa, a Ugandan, if he could imagine doing anything else? He said, “Only when we’re done.” Srour had the same answer.

 

 
Gita school
The school in Gita opened in 2010, the result of BT’s first – though not last – multidisciplinary collaboration with an American university partner. 
 
In the 2007-2008 school year, undergraduate architecture and engineering students at the University of Virginia’s Architecture Studio reCOVER and its Engineering in Context Capstone Design Program designed Gita’s seven classrooms, its library, its latrines, its office space and its outdoor play and learning space (including a sports field and garden). 
 
Other students from the University of Virginia raised money to help the architecture and engineering students’ plans become a reality, including a stationary bike ride ‘across Uganda,’ in which students rode more than 7,500 miles to help raise the necessary $60,000 to build and supply a BT Academy. 
 
Srour and Kalisa clearly still couldn’t believe  –  even years later  – so many people rode so many miles so far away to help kids in Gita, in rural Uganda.
 
Although the design and funding came from the University of Virginia, the local community around Gita built the school.  Through more than 20,000 hours of donated labor, prospective parents and grandparents made the BT Academy in Gita a reality. It was the best-looking, most inviting school we saw on our drive down the dirt road, and yes, still one made of mud and bricks and stone and with outdoor, though hygienic and private, latrines. 
 
The kids were curious, the teachers engaged, the parents proud – and all treated their school space with dignity and respect.
 
Sustainable model
Ultimately, BT academies, including Gita, are public government schools.  Once the building is complete, BT in Uganda, through an agreement with the Ugandan government and with Kalisa’s supervision, selects high quality teachers who will make the most of the open, welcoming environment BT academies offer. 

The Ugandan government then pays for the ongoing operating costs of the schools and the teachers’ and supervisors’ salaries.  This arrangement – versus many other efforts in the U.S. to raise money to build a school somewhere far away with no plans for what happens after the doors open – has a clear plan for sustainable impact: it creates clarity around what is the local community’s responsibility, what is the Ugandan government’s responsibility and what is BT’s responsibility. 
 
That longer-term focus and clarity make BT distinctive – and more likely to have better results for its students, their parents – and their university partners back in the U.S.
 
BT now has eight schools up and running in Uganda, with another six close to completion. More than 25 college and university campuses in the U.S. have contributed funds, designs and time to help more than 1,800 Ugandan kids get a better education – and future. 
 
Next up: teacher academy

One new area of focus for Srour and Kalisa is building teacher capacity – they are clearly concerned there are soon not going to be enough high caliber teachers for the schools they are building already and dreaming about. 
 
Srour and Kalisa’s answer? Build a teacher training academy. 
 
Chelsea Clinton is an NBC News Special Correspondent. She was recently traveling with her father, former President Bill Clinton, to visit Clinton Foundation, Clinton Health Access Initiative and Clinton Global Initiative projects in a number of sub-Saharan African countries, including Uganda. In 2011, Building Tomorrow made a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative to have built at least 60 schools in Uganda over the next 5 years.

 

 

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GULU, Uganda – Young Jacob Acaye’s declaration that he would rather die than continue to lead his life in fear has broken the hearts of the tens of millions of people around the world who have watched “KONY 2012,” an Internet advocacy documentary about the misdeeds of a Ugandan warlord.

But about nine years later – and just a week or so after the video became an online sensation – one of the most talked-about people of current days is a picture of anonymity.

In his hometown in northern Uganda, the 21-year-old seemed relaxed, and perhaps a little reserved, as he wandered down the street where he used to huddle under blankets along with up to 800 other children for protection from advancing rebels.

I stood with him, gazing down a busy sidewalk waiting for someone to catch his eye – to question him, to thank him or to embrace him. There's nothing.

We had traveled to Gulu to assess reaction to the 30-minute video, which has become one of the most successful online campaigns of all time. As of this writing, it’s up to 78 million views on YouTube.

But tweets, status updates and trending topics mean very little here. In downtown Gulu, it has pretty much missed many of those people who have been most affected by the bloodshed.

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Western campaign
It shouldn’t be a surprise. With access to the Internet limited, very few people here have seen the “Invisible Children” campaigners’ call to make Joseph Kony famous, a move they hoped would, in turn, make him infamous.

After all, he is already despised in these parts:  His face and his name are known by everyone and have haunted this place for decades. It seems that everyone can name one of his victims – someone who was slaughtered, orphaned or abducted by his army of thugs.

Why make Kony famous? Video rubs some raw Ugandan scars 

In fact, many people in Gulu are far from excited by the campaign; they have heard it discussed on local radio and feel that it has its heart far from the dusty roads of rural Uganda. This is a campaign by Westerners, “the white men,” said one resident.

What divides opinion is whether that really matters. To Jacob it doesn’t, he would welcome attention from anyone, anywhere. To many others it feels like a patronizing challenge to national pride. “KONY 2012” doesn’t really feel like their campaign.

In Gulu, there are memorials to a series of massacres, the most recent in 2004. But while the legacy of fear created by a generation of violence certainly endures, in many ways this place has moved on. Confidence has grown with peace.

Moving on
Sitting around making small-talk, a group of men asked me to join them. Their conversation is about Kony, as often seems to be the case. Fueled by bravado and, perhaps, a little beer, they said it would be impossible for the warlord to return. They spoke of him only in the past tense, despite rumors that he was in the area over Christmas for a brief visit.

“We don’t expect anything. We don’t expect him anymore in the country,” said one man, who is convinced that Kony is in hiding in the Central African Republic or South Sudan.

In other parts of the town, some told me that there is no need for a campaign at all, as Kony’s men have moved on. Others don't want to hear his name. “Why re-open these wounds?” one man asked me once he learned of my reason for being in Gulu.

Some fear that too much talk of Kony might bring him back and risk their community's relative calm. Others worry that their homeland is being characterized around the world purely as a place of terror – “Konyland” as one aid worker described it.

Most of all, they wonder why the world has suddenly started to worry about them now? It’s not necessarily that they don’t welcome the attention, but many cannot subscribe to the newfound enthusiasm of the campaign’s supporters abroad. They have long tired of asking for attention and being ignored.

Acaye, however, is as passionate as when he was as a boy and believes that the video is important and valuable.

“Kony has not yet stopped killing young ones,” he said. “Kony has not yet stopped abducting people. Kony has not yet stopped forcing young girls into sex slaves.

“And that is what we are fighting for. We want it stopped.”