Thursday, October 17, 2019
VOLUME 2 I ISSUE 16
MERIDIANSOURCE.CA
Lloyd Samaritans bond with Uganda GEOFF LEE
WRITER
.................................. Meet us under the mango tree. That’s what a group of about 11 Lloydminster area residents did earlier this year on a “vision trip” invitation to Uganda to experience the success of a project called Our Village Community Partnership (OVCP). The project supporters met again inside the Living Faith Pentecostal Tabernacle on Oct. 9 to organize a fundraiser and hear more about OVCP from its Canadian director and co-founder, Terra Lorenz, now living in Saskatoon. Lorenz and Ugandan Paul Bogere took over a corrupt rural orphanage more than 12 years ago with a dream to transform it into a school and create sustainable local communities. “We reconnect children with living relatives and we partner with those families to help them get access to education, health care and different training,” said Lorenz, who lived
in Uganda for nearly six years. Now she has a twoyear-old daughter so she is trying to organize a team to get some other people to go to the site in Uganda.
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It’s coming up to 13 years—it’s beautiful. There’s children that I met in in 2006 —it was really a bleak situation and today they have jobs and they have broken the cycle of poverty.
The inspiration for OVCP came from learning that Ugandan families living in extreme poverty felt the only way for their children to access those services was to leave them at an orphanage. Lorenz learned these families didn’t want to abandon their children but saw it as the only way of giving them a chance at a better life. Today, the school has about 560 elementary students and more than
75 students attending secondary school or a trades school. The project also facilitates agricultural training for men and women and teaches tailoring trades to women. “It’s coming up to 13 years—it’s beautiful. There’s children that I met in 2006 —it was really a bleak situation and today they have jobs and they have broken the cycle of poverty,” said Lorenz. “They are providing for their families. Over the years when you see the effort pay off, it’s incredibly uplifting.” Lorenz says the Ugandans are leading the training on the ground with her role being behind the scenes to support them with what they need. Her goal is to get every project to the point where it’s fully self-sustaining and she welcomes supporters and the many sponsors from Lloydminster with open arms. Helping to beat the drums of awareness is Victoria Johnson, a wealth services consul-
Supplied Photo
Former Kitscoty area resident Terra Lorenz, right, the director of Our Village Community Project in Uganda, chatted with a retired cook from the program during a group trip to Uganda by about 11 area residents earlier in the year.
tant with Synergy Credit Union and Lorenz’s aunt who visited the project site in January. “It was heartwarming, quite remarkable—lifechanging when you get to meet the people you hear about from Terra— seeing how they all come together as a community outside of the school,”
said Johnson. The trip also made her feel incredibly grateful to live in Canada and also very grateful to go and experience what they did experience. “Seeing the poverty over there—but also just seeing the joy and love of the people—they were constantly thanking us
Canadians for all our support,” she said. “ We ne e d t o t h ank them for the learning opportunities they give us as well.” She also thanks Synergy for letting her go during the busy RSP investment period of the year. CONTINUED ON PAGE 4