Kulanu has partnered with the Abayudaya community of eastern Uganda since 1995. Among our proudest achievements have been initiation and support of the Semei Kakungulu High School, founded in 1999, and the Abayudaya Elementary School, started in 2001. Created to counter the harassment that Jewish students were experiencing in government-run schools, these schools now successfully serve 767 Jewish students and their Christian and Muslim neighbors, who learn and play together in peace. Because this African country faces extreme economic hardship, Kulanu also began filling the need for a school lunch program several years ago, to serve the hungry students at the Abayudaya schools.
For the past year Kulanu has been able to supply a breakfast of soy-enriched porridge and sweet bananas and lunch of posho (a kind of thick corn porridge) and beans at both the primary and the high school, replacing a less filling 3 day-a-week lunch "snack" that Kulanu provided in recent years. These modest meals lift tremendous burdens from the shoulders of students and their families. Students, who previously came to school hungry, now arrive at school on time and ready to learn. Reports of teachers, students, and observers agree that better nourished students are able to focus and learn more effectively, display better discipline, and are absent and late less often. It is imperative to continue this school nutrition program, which requires ongoing support.
Kulanu is the Hebrew word for “all of us” and it was founded in 1994 as a grassroots organization to encourage each of us living within strong, vibrant Jewish communities, particularly in North America, to reach out to groups embracing Judaism in faraway places and help bring them into the “all of us” that is the worldwide Jewish community. Kulanu supports isolated and emerging Jewish communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. We help these communities and connect them with other Jews across borders and continents. Our connections help all of us enrich our Jewish lives.
Kulanu works with these distant groups and individuals through networking and support. We raise awareness and support for these communities through education, research, and publications about their histories and traditions. We keep our website (www.kulanu.org), blog, email lists, Facebook page, and Twitter, packed with news and informative resources; publish and distribute a fascinating newsletter; organize international speaking tours; reach out to youth, congregations, and other groups; operate an online Kulanu Boutique (www.kulanuboutique.com); and help with visits and volunteering in the communities with which we work. We also coordinate an annual Mitzvah Tour to the Abayudaya community in Uganda (kulanu.org/trips). Kulanu does all of this with one part-time staff member, an active volunteer board of directors, regional coordinators, and a widespread community of supporters and volunteers.
Since 1995 Kulanu has partnered with the Abayudaya (Jewish) community of Uganda in the creation and management of almost two dozen successful community development projects. These include women's microfinance, agricultural training, health education, clean water, grain mill construction, and an award-winning fair-trade coffee cooperative organized among Christian, Jewish and Muslim farmers, unique in Africa. Local managers are trained, helped, and constantly reminded that accurate record-keeping and budgeting are essential. We have been heartened at the increasing fiscal skills that community leaders have attained. Repeat visitors can attest to general improvement in quality of life. Villages where the Abayudaya and their neighbors live have changed visually in the last several years, with fewer "bandas" made of mud and thatch and more substantial dwellings of native brick. Where in years past open-air lean-tos served as synagogues, now more villages have modest brick synagogues, some with windows and doors.
Kulanu’s mission is to reach out to and support isolated and emerging Jewish communities such as the Abayudaya, who chose Judaism in 1915 and have been struggling to thrive ever since. Kulanu has been working with the Abayudaya for 16 years to encourage their economic development as well as nourish their lives as Jews. In particular, the high school and elementary schools, founded in 1999 and 2001 respectively as a joint Kulanu-Abayudaya effort, educate 767 students (404 in the high school and 363 in the elementary school). Able headmasters - Seth Jonadav at the high school and Aaron Kintu Moses at the elementary school - have worked closely with Kulanu since before the schools began. Trained in educational management, they encourage continued learning among their staffs. In spite of the challenges of an inflationary economy in Uganda, the schools are succeeding in educating an increasing number of students each year.
Where formerly students came to school hungry and rarely progressed educationally beyond elementary school, the Kulanu-Abayudaya school programs have filled critical needs. Students who graduate from our schools gain the skills to obtain respectable jobs or to go on to higher education. But as their successes have become well-known, school enrollments have increased, presenting a continuing challenge for Kulanu and its supporters. In a community of mostly subsistence-farming families, at a time when food prices are rising, it is increasingly difficult to provide the nutrition the students need in order to excel in their studies.
Yet, in spite of these challenges, elementary school students got the highest test scores in the sub-county last year. The high school has been qualified as a national testing center (a designation that few obtain), and the government chose it as a partner in their program of free/subsidized tuition at private schools for high school students in the first four years of secondary school. The Kulanu-supported school nutrition program provides two meals a day to hungry students, which increases their academic performance. Please help us to continue to serve this needy population of students, the future of their communities.
Name of Organization:Kulanu, Inc
Number of Paid Staff:0 full-time, 1 part-time
Number of Volunteers:3 regular office volunteers, more than 50 worldwide
Total Organizational Expenses:$163,096
% of Organizational Overhead Expenses:18%
When Kulanu first came into contact with the Abayudaya more than 15 years ago, they were hardly known to the outside Jewish world. Since then, the community has been embraced world-wide. The Abayudaya have welcomed consultants in Jewish and secular education, sanitation, construction, and tourism, to name a few specialties. Through our website, our rich newsletter, and our extensive experience in social networking, we have helped to open the Abayudaya community to the world. The annual tour we organize for an Abayudaya speaker also helps promote the community around the United States and Canada and adds significantly to the community's funding. We receive so many calls and emails from individuals who want to travel to meet the Abayudaya that we have drafted a document with travel and visitor information.
We pride ourselves on oversight of only those projects that have been proposed and sanctioned by community members themselves; we do not impose our views from above. We are partners, often mentors, never bosses, while at the same time we insist on accountability and transparency. This is the dearly-held core philosophy of Laura Wetzler, Kulanu's extraordinary coordinator for the Abayudaya. Along with her career as a performer, Laura devotes many hours every week to communicating with Abayudaya leaders and members as partner, mentor, and friend. Every year she organizes a "mitzvah trip" to the community for people throughout the US and Canada, garnering friends and supporters for the Abayudaya, inspired by their passion for Jewish life and charmed by their warmth and beautiful singing. In conjunction with the tour, people from the Abayudaya villages come together for a song and dance festival, a meeting of the Abayudaya Women's Association, and a get-together by the youth - rare and anticipated opportunities, all spurred by Laura's determination and love for the community. Harriet Bograd, Kulanu's president, also devotes many hours as a consultant to Abayudaya project managers, especially in regard to budgeting and accountability.
Naume Sabano, coordinator of the Abayudaya schools’ nutrition program, reported that absenteeism and dropout rates have been dramatically reduced since we introduced the nutrition program in the schools, and that concentration, mental health, and discipline have improved “tremendously.” The schools have seen students improve academically as they no longer have to worry about where their next meal will come from, or sacrifice time in the classroom to look for a nutritious lunch.
A letter from Elifaz Balungi, a student at the community high school that Kulanu created and supports, reads:
We humbly send our…gratitude to the donors and well-wishers of Semei Kakungulu High School for sacrificing and standing by the students…The (food Kulanu pays for) has many useful impacts. Academically, students have improved as they only (used to) concentrate on thinking about what to eat. It has improved the health of the students as they (now) have a balanced diet. It has also helped the parents to send the students to school without worries. It helps the school and the students not to…dodge classes, especially in the afternoon session, as they get assured of breakfast and lunch. The (food) service makes students be punctual, as they don’t (have to) travel long distances to search for what to eat….On behalf of the other students, we request the service to continue. (It) is highly appreciated by the students, the school, and the parents.
Clothing
Education
Family Harmony
Hunger & Nutrition
Poverty
Spirituality
Kulanu relies on volunteers for its endeavors. We are volunteer-driven and volunteer-run. Our volunteers are a source of ideas and energy; they teach in our communities; welcome visitors and speakers to their communities; develop educational and economic projects; make presentations to local, regional and national groups; raise funds and rouse their communities; share resources; help in our office with behind-the-scene work; and seek grants from family and national foundations. And so much more!
Another important way volunteers participate is by sharing their mitzvah projects with Kulanu. You can help by choosing the Abayudaya community of Uganda as the focus for your mitzvah project. A Kulanu Mitzvah Project is a way of participating in tzedekah and making a global impact through your special lifecycle occasion. Your project can be part of your own Bar/Bat Mitzvah, or you can organize a team tzedekah project with your class, JCC, youth group, or camp. Because Kulanu works all over the world, there are lots of programs, communities, and fund-raising campaigns to choose from when you design a Mitzvah Project with us. Check out www.kulanu.org/mitzvahprojects for resources and ideas to get you started!
Your Mitzvah Project can be as big or as small as you want it to be; the possibilities are endless, so get creative! Some kids who have done projects with us in the past have included educating their peers and communities, selling products made by a Kulanu partner community, or even visiting one of the communities we support. Group projects include a “mezuza-thon”, where kids decorate blank wooden mezuzot, or make their own from clay to send to Jewish communities in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Students have also organized “Around the Jewish World” events to raise their classmates’ awareness of Jews in faraway places. For more about how you can design your mitzvah project with Kulanu, visit www.kulanu.org/mitzvahprojects
Name:Harriet Bograd
Title:President
Address:165 West End Ave #3R
Telephone:212.877.8082
Email:contact@kulanu.org
Website:www.kulanu.org