From the comfort of his Maple Grove home, Ben Kaster has helped people half a world away. Though he may be oceans apart from the African country of Uganda, distance is no factor for him and others who are part of the Uganda Rural Fund (URF).
Kaster, a 2001 graduate of Maple Grove Senior High, founded the URF in 2005 after hearing the story of Brother John Mary Lugemwa. The two met in a class at St. John’s University in 2004, where Kaster got to know Lugemwa and heard his story. Kaster describes his story as one of “a little boy from Uganda with big dreams.” Raised in a mud-house, Lugemwa walked seven miles to school to sit on dirt floors, writing in a notebook made from papers he stapled together. His parents, with less than a sixth-grade education, practiced subsistence farming and struggled to carve out a path to prosperity for their seven kids in a the small village of Kyetume. Tragically, Lugemwa’s father was murdered on Christmas Eve in 1998 when he was 19 years old. With his father’s words that “education was his passport to the world,” ringing in his ears, Lugemwa decided to follow his dream of becoming a priest at age 26 and moved to Minnesota where he met Kaster.
“I was a peace studies major looking to go into medicine when John asked me to join him one summer when he went home,” Kaster recalls. “I couldn’t say ‘no.’” They ended up bringing nine other students with them and set up a service mission to orphanages, schools, clinics and community centers in Uganda, Kenya and the genocide-ravaged Rwanda. And thus began the Uganda Rural Fund, which Kaster describes as “a movement to empower orphaned children in similar situations as John was.”
Today this grassroots nonprofit organization is helping AIDS orphans, underprivileged youth and women in rural communities to fight the cycle of poverty through educational and sustainable development opportunities. Since its inception, the URF has built the Hope Academy, a high school for teenage orphans and an orphanage, started after-school programs, youth leadership camps, a women’s empowerment group, small business management training and so much more.
Emily Hoskins, who graduated from MGSH in 2006, has followed in the footsteps of Kaster and had her first chance to visit the village of Kyetume in the summer of 2009 as a part of the Engineers without Borders program through her mechanical engineering studies at the University of Minnesota. Sparked by her love of travel, Hoskins signed up for Engineers without Borders and found herself spending the past two summers in Uganda, installing a submersible water pump and working on a micro-irrigation project. “We used in-country materials to build an irrigation kit for a small plot, so they could grill vegetables during the dry season,” explains Hoskins, who added that they have no capacity to carry over water from the wet season to the dry season.
This past summer, Hoskins also helped build and install smoke- and fuel-reducing stoves for women in the Ugandan villages. Because they cooked inside close quarters with their previous stoves, many of the women and children have developed severe respiratory problems, and some have even gone blind.” The stoves we put in reduce the smoke that they inhaled and cut down on fuel consumption,” Hoskins says.
The efforts of Engineers without Borders were well-received, as the women’s group from URF was anxious to receive the stoves and was very receptive to learning how to use them. But the Ugandan women weren’t the only people who learned something. Hoskins, too, has learned from her experience in Uganda. “It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “What struck me the most was how appreciative they were.”
Though significant improvements are being made in Kyetume, Kaster’s work continues. “Ben has been there from day one,” says Lugemwa. Since the founding of URF, Kaster has been an active member of the board and is constantly speaking at community events to raise awareness and support for programs in Uganda. However, his ultimate goal is to practice medicine in Uganda once he graduates from medical school in 2012.
“It’s important to me as a person, as an uncle, as a brother, as a son, as a human,” says Kaster. “I can’t help but think of my nieces and nephews, of my mother and father, and my brothers, and put their face to the people of Uganda.”
Though the fundraising and the planning may be challenging at times, Kaster is motivated by visions of a better life for the people in Uganda. “With URF and our family of volunteers and donors,” Kaster says, “we are sharing stories and ideas of a better world, of a better planet.”
