US-Uganda Godparents Association

Contact Person:	Rebecca Salonen, director	Erinah Rutangye, Uganda Project Coordinator
Address:	14415 Bauer Drive,  Rockville, MD 20853	P. O. Box 10722  Kampala, Uganda
Country:	USA	Uganda
Telephone:	301-871-8798
Fax:	301-871-6418
Email:	GMAssn@aol.com

  The Purpose of the U.S.-Uganda Godparents Association is education of people in the United States regarding FGM, and particularly about the successful REACH program in Uganda and subsequent developments there. We are seeking women and men who would like to serve as "godparents" to young women in Kapchorwa, Uganda, who have chosen not to undergo circumcision. (Traditionally, circumcisers, key to adult life in the village, have served as "godmothers" to the girls they cut, receiving lifelong respect and economic rewards and gifts from the girls and their families. We would like to reverse this, by being godparents offering the girls support that will allow them enter the wider world.) 

These girls can only sustain their determination not to submit to FGM if they have alternatives to the traditions of village life (which require circumcision), so we are seeking to provide secondary school fees for the girls, as a beginning. Even if they are qualified by good exams, Kapchorwa girls generally do not get secondary education because their families are too poor or unsympathetic to provide the $1,500 per year needed for a boarding school. The Godparents Association will also begin building a secondary school in the district (the community has already agreed to donate the site and building materials), and later we plan to start a program of "vocational education," whereby women may learn the skills to be economically self-sufficient, thus providing them options to traditional women's life. As others have pointed out, FGM can never be defeated so long as women have no options in life.

We inaugurated our activities June 15-16 by bringing Hon. Jane Frances Kuka, Uganda Minister of Gender and Cultural Affairs, to speak at the UN and at the National Press Club in Washington. She told about her avoidance of circumcision as a girl and her later experiences facing down intimidation on the matter from her home culture. Finally she was able to become a continent-level leader opposing FGM and even converted the elders of her home community to her point of view. This year the Sabiny Elders Association in fact received the UNFPA's Population Award for their efforts in discouraging FGM while preserving the meaningful aspects of their culture. 

In addition to funding the secondary school fees of young Ugandan women who choose not to undergo FGM, and whose parents therefore deny them the money, we plan to build a school, counseling center, and skills-training facility in the future in Kapchorwa District, home of the Sabiny, the major cultural group practicing FGM in Uganda. We distribute information about FGM and our culturally sensitive approach to combatting it, and I have been speaking in university classes and to women's and social groups about it. I am in the process of writing some articles about our experiences when we went to Kapchorwa District last November-December, the circumcision season. I wrote an informal report to the FGM-L mailing list on our return. Besides providing information, our major focus is recruiting "Godparents," whose contributions will be pooled to pay the school fees and who we hope will write to the girls they support and offer them encouragement. We plan to invite all of these Godparents to Uganda every November to meet the girls they are sponsoring. In the meantime I am creating a newsletter to keep in touch with our members, though the first issue has not yet emerged.