My name is Br.John Mary, a College Student at St. John's University in Minnesota, USA. I will graduate this spring with degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. I am originally from Uganda. I am deeply passionate about helping people, especially children who have no one to support them. Over the years I have developed a renewed commitment to peace and social justice causes. I am involved with AIDS awareness programs on campus, Genocide awareness and prevention, Amnesty International, and few other activities. I found the Global AIDS Awareness student organization and an International AIDS Serving learning program for college students to live and volunteer with communities in East Africa as a way of promoting global solidarity. The program involves working with AIDS support organizations helping out at orphanages, AIDS clinics, nutrition centers, women's groups, and youth group activities. Our first trip in 2005 was an eye opener; we realized these communities were heavily affected by the AIDS epidemic and burdened by increasing numbers of orphans. We thought we couldnt just sit back and do nothing. So, we started to look for help to support kids in school. Eventually, we realized perhaps we would be able to help more kids if we build a school- other than sponsoring individual kids. The idea seemed logical, so we drew up plans and construction started early 2006 (a structure of 14 rooms). The Hope Integrated Academy (www.hopeacademyuganda.org) will consist of a Vocational School, a Community Library, a Computer Center, and a Clinic. The school is located in Masaka, south western Uganda. This is a much needed resource because there are many youth in the villages who do not have jobs because they have any skills. They either dropped out of school because they lost parents or the parents are too poor to send them to school. Once they reach adulthood, they start families of their own--with no income, they can not afford to send their kids to school either; that's how the cycle of poverty is perpetrated. We hope by providing practical skills, we can gradually break this cycle. Skills training will include Agricultura, carpentry, tailoring, computer skills, hair dressing, candle and shoe making, entrepreneural leadership, small business management, construction, etc. The library and computer center will provide access to education resources to students and teachers from over 15 schools in the area. The majority of rural schools don't have libraries or computer labs. Students learn only from lectures and notes taken in class. From my personal experience, I found that challenging; I did go through poor rural school in Uganda. We hope to be able to bring technology and internet to the rural poor. The school is still under construction, you can pictures on the website. It still needs a roof, windows, doors, and concrete floor. The project has received most of its funding from college students' fundraising. We formed the Uganda Rural Fund USA, Inc (URF|USA www,ugandaruralcommunitysupport.org) to support this work in an a formal structure. URF is registered as 501c3 charity in the USA and in Uganda. We operate an orphanage, support a womens' and youth group, a brick making project, piggery project, and various farming projects. We are still a very small organization, started in late 2005. There has been however, a strong attraction toward our project by volunteers from all over the world. We will grow as we partner with more individuals and organization. We partnered with Engineers without Border who are helping us with the water/sanitation and power project for the school and neighboring villages. Thanks you for allowing me to share with you about my work. For any comments or questions, please feel free to contact me at jmlugemwa@gmail.com I will be happy to answer any questions. Peace and God bless you!