A few words

About Us

Our mission

We serve the critical needs of our local mothers and children to provide a better quality of life

Meet Monica

The Mothers of Good Hope, a non-profit organization in Eastern Uganda, was founded in 2010 by Monica Logose. She grew up in the Butebo district of Uganda and has remained here to raise her own family. Monica is the first born of seven children and would later have 5 children of her own. Her love for people and motherly heart has stemmed from growing up in such a large family, learning compassion and the proper way to treat people from her own mother. During her childhood, she went to village school and would later graduate as a social worker. As a member of a close knit community in rural Uganda from birth, she has had a close and personal look at the struggles and hardships her fellow mothers and friends experience everyday.

The Need

The exposure and experience to the suffering of the women around her, showed her the desperate need for change. With her husband Paul, they started an organization called the Pallisa Children’s Concern Project which is aimed at rehabilitating and educating vulnerable children. However, Monica took initiative with her own idea of advocating on behalf of the women once she saw the gaps in the idea of the children’s project. With endless children at risk and needing support, she saw that it would be impossible to help them all. Branching off from the PCCP with differing objectives, Monica decided to step forward as the voice of the mothers and hoped that this would in turn benefit their children. Women in Uganda suffer terribly from poverty. Many of them are abandoned by their husbands who feel that the responsibilities of supporting a family are too big a burden to bear for them. They run away to the refugee of concubines who may not be so demanding as his family. Women are left to support the family and raise the children on their own. They are even refused the support of their family because Ugandan custom prevents a woman from returning to her family even if the husband leaves her. Women here do not have the sufficient education to rely on either. Many of them drop out early on, often because of reaching puberty or becoming pregnant. 20% of girls drop out of school due to pregnancy and 30% drop out because of marriage. If they are lucky enough, they are able to benefit from casual jobs like maids or shop assistants. Living on less than $2 a day for most, making ends meet for her family and working to support the education and health of her children is a hardship that many women across Uganda share. Because of these overbearing burdens, the children often become neglected and resort to living on the streets where they beg for food or money. Living on the streets, kids are left to their own devices and fall into bad habits of stealing and doing drugs. Many wander the streets, barefoot and hungry, without the care of a mother or guidance on how to live and provide for themselves. With overwhelming proof of the desperate need facing these women and children, Monica looked to her family and friends to support her developing idea aimed at aiding these marginalized groups of people. She would soon have the momentum to start The Mothers of Good Hope.

Starting the organization

Following her two younger sisters’ tragic and untimely deaths caused by the poor medical treatments, and the everyday suffering of the women in her community, she became determined to dedicate her life to the prevention of such tragedies again, namely for women and children. She began to seek out ways to support the local women of her community, finding ways to provide opportunities, encourage them to be self-sufficient, and earn income for their families. The close bond of her childhood community allowed her the trust and confidence of the struggles each woman faced. Most of these women suffer from their inability to provide for their families and also from domestic violence and poverty. Earning little money from cultivating crops and rearing animals, each women struggles to make ends meet each day. Seeing this, she slowly started building a foundation for what would become The Mothers of Good Hope. Initially, with a small group of women, though the organization has grown to support over 70 women, she started a poultry farm that now has over 1300 chickens whose eggs are collected and sold to provide income to the women of the organization and hopefully allow them to open more small farms for other women to benefit from. The goal is to eventually be able to provide a small demonstration farm to each woman in the organization.

Teaching women to be self sufficient

Because these women lack both the access to education and the time to devote to it, they have few skills that offer them the chance to make their own money. This has lead to the initiation of another project, a vocational skills training center, where women will have the opportunity to learn important skills such as tailoring, making handicrafts, and animal rearing. Another aim of this training is to provide the chance of learning how to read and write and also allowing the same access to education for their children.

Building the hospital

The biggest project thus far, for The Mothers of Good Hope, has been the construction of a local hospital that will be able to serve over 30,000 people in the surrounding areas that are the Budeka, Pallisa, and Butebo districts. Because of her heart for mothers and children, she will be providing this care for free to those who lack the funds for such medical services especially for mothers giving birth. Knowing that many of these women fear such establishments due to the enormous costs that follow and, in turn, seek other, more dangerous methods of receiving healthcare, the organization has vowed to provide safe and inexpensive care to all in need. We does not wish to see any woman or child suffer from the poor medical experiences her family and countless others have already endured.

The project has taken over 2 years to complete and though still lacking important facilities to treat specific illnesses, it will open its doors to serve as many people as possible and hopefully continue to add to its facilities as time and funds continue. The hope is, to gain access to more women in need and allow them to join the Mothers of Good Hope community as they come through the hospital and benefit from the medical services.

History

Our Milestones

Over the past decade, The Mothers of Good Hope has grown significantly in all aspects of the organization. Our biggest aim has been the continuous work on Shawin Hospital with the addition of several new facilities and the ongoing construction of the various hospital wings.

However, our work is far from being completed. We are in the process of establishing a Vocational Training Center where the mothers in our organization will have the ability to learn essential skills and training that can be utilized in earning an income to support themselves and their families.