Hello everyone! My name is Borrsha and my co-op placement is in Lira, Uganda for the span of 10 months as an intern with an organization called Children of Hope Uganda (COHU). This organization works with a village in Northern Uganda called Barlonyo, in two fields of development: education and social enterprise. It aims to assist children of the community in receiving education and the families in improving their forms of livelihood so that they are capable of sending their children to school. The organization works with this village in particular because of the presence of war-affected youth. Barlonyo is a village where there was a large number of internally displaced people who were murdered in the hundreds by Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 2004. Today the village has a nursery school and a vocational school that provides education for the youth and the children of those who were affected by the war.
During my time as an intern in Uganda I hope to assist in the projects and tasks of COHU and contribute in a positive way to the organization and people in Lira and Barlonyo. I am excited to see where my research takes me. I have a wide array of interests within development but I do hope to conduct research related to education or livelihood so that it can be of some use to the organization and people in Barlonyo. All of this would not be possible without the financial assistance through the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship and the Scarborough-York Region Chinese Business Association Scholarship.
This placement is what I have been looking forward to for the last three years and I am very excited to be working with such a wonderful organization!