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Mission: To rescue vulnerable and economically disavantaged children from the dire circumstances in which they are currently living, by providing housing, their basic necessities and education. Our hope is that these children will have a chance to fully realize their God-given pontential and empower them, to become leaders and productive members of the their community.

Vision:
-To establish long tern community-based homes for orphaned, abandoned and neglected children.
-To provide education and job training.
-To provide medical care fot the orphans.
-To intergrate the community into improving the lives of the orphans.
-To build and incorporate a non denominational place of worship.

IN 2000, Victoria Nalongo Namusisi began Bright Kids Orphanage in hopes of making the lives better for children in Uganda. Victoria’s background prepared her for the life of service. She was born to a peasant fisherman and early in her media career she served as a presidential and parliamentary reporter up to 1991 when the President of Uganda appointed her Resident District Commissioner; she later became Head of Administration and Logistics for the President of Uganda’s Office.

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It wasn’t until 2000 when she was serving as Chief Commissionaire for Scouts in Uganda when through taking scouting to the streets of Kampala she came face to face with the reality that actually most street kids longed for what they would call Home and loving arms to run into. Victoria saw that her role could be more effective if she began her own orphanage to care for the children of Uganda and as a result she started Bright Kids Uganda. then called Sunrise Children’s Village, in April 2000.

“I would hear people say, ‘there goes the fisherman’s daughter,’ whenever I passed by,” she told an audience of education and psychology undergraduate and graduate students at Carlow University on October 2. “My father used to tell us that the only gift he could ever give us was an education.”

Once she had her education and became a journalist and then a district administrator in Uganda, Namusisi discovered that her entire family’s status had been upgraded.

“Once I had my education, I would hear people say, ‘there goes the district administrator’s father,’” she said, noting that there was little difference between her family and other fishermen’s families except for one thing. “The difference was that my father took education seriously.”

Bright Kids Uganda provides a home and education for more than 60 children who have been affected by violent conflicts in Northern Uganda, HIV/AIDS, poverty and abandonment. One of the first children she cared for at Bright Kids Uganda was a young boy living on the streets of a city in northern Uganda that was ravaged by war for nearly two decades. The boy appeared to be no more than three or four, but she was stunned when she discovered how old he actually was.

“He was six and a half years old, but he was so malnourished that he looked like he was three and a half,” she said. He had a swollen face and a distended belly, but, when she took him to a doctor, she found he was disease-free. Still, because of the malnourishment, the doctor gave him only about two weeks to live.

“If you want to save him,” the doctor told Namusisi, “keep him warm and give him food.” But even with that treatment plan, the doctor wouldn’t—or couldn’t—give any guarantees that he would survive.

That didn’t deter Namusisi. She went to see if she could find any parents or relatives, and when she asked if she could take the boy with her, she was stunned at the one word answer, “Take.”

“It was a big shock to me that a whole human being had no value,” she said. “Life had lost its value in northern Uganda because of this war.”

With food, shelter, and especially her care, the boy thrived, and now he is a teenager, healthy and strong, but still a grade level or two behind his age group due to the neglect he experienced early in life.

“I thank God that through Bright Kids I had the chance to save some lives,” said Namusisi. “You are blessed in this country. Education is a right. In Uganda, education is not a right. It is a privilege.”