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We initially spent about 1 1/2 hours with Ephraim and discussed various aspects of the ministry. He also gave us a very enlightening history of his involvement in the area. We met with him at his home where he lives with his new wife, Joyce. His first wife tragically died during the Covid pandemic.
The church is on land that he owns and has a membership of about 70 people. The rest of his land, which is quite large, is farmed. We had a chance to look at a lot of the farming that was taking place, and there is a degree of Foundations for Farming principles being employed on this farm. In particular, the banana plantation showed good evidence of mulching, perhaps a bit less so with the maize that had only just been planted and possibly awaiting mulch. The bean crop had been mulched and clearly was producing a good harvest. There were pumpkins growing and yams as well. It is clear that the farm is being actively managed and that Foundations for Farming is being practiced to a limited degree.
While we had a cup of coffee, Ephraim gave us some of the background to Dove Ministries and how he had come to be at the district. He had previously been a secondary school teacher for eight years but also had an internet business on the side, running an internet cafe in Kampala. The income he received from that business and other work activities suggested he was quite entrepreneurial. One of his good friends was a Muslim man, and when he came to understand that Ephraim was not simply earning money for himself but was earning money to help the lives of children and young people and put into a church, he was very touched. To this day his friend is still a Muslim, but he did two things. Out of his friendship with Ephraim, he purchased some land in Wakiso, on the outskirts of Kampala which Ephraim had been eyeing, and there is now a school on that land with quite a number of students. The man has also provided ongoing support and to this day pays the fees for approximately 50 of those students.
A few years later Ephraim and his then wife, Jova, wanted to purchase some land outside the city for farming and other activities. They ultimately purchased the land on which the church and his home now stand. The farming activities have been carefully developed, and of course Ephraim has his network of Dove Churches which he has overseen for many years. The Dove Church network consists of 100 or more churches in the Uganda area. These are divided into five regions, and each region has a regional leader. Ephraim has now stepped back from local church pastoring and the church on his property is currently pastored by somebody else. He is now responsible for the oversight of the Dove Churches in Uganda and relates to the regional leadership who in turn relate to the local leadership. However, he travels a fair bit to minister and to consult.
We met Ephraim’s daughter, Grace, who is heavily involved with administration in Touch Africa Now (TAN), the NGO that Ephraim founded, and which had its 30th anniversary last year. He thinks she might ultimately be his successor in the organisation. She is married with three children. TAN has a number of activities up and down Uganda. Ephraim was extremely grateful for the support that Bright Hope has given to the sewing and menstrual pad programmes in Kiryandongo; the tailoring programme at the church; the menstrual pads programme in one of the schools which is run by Maureen, one of his pastoral assistants; and a tailoring programme in Nassama which is another suburb of Kampala about three kilometres from where we met. Maureen, who is responsible for the social pastoral care side of TAN, comes across as an extremely confident and capable young woman. She seems to have been responsible for most of the organisation for today and the MC. We are greatly impressed with her.
We were invited to attend the graduation of the 10 students at Ebenezer Dove Ministries Church who had completed sewing skills training as part of their vocational training and were to receive certificates. It was a very formal, interesting, and fun event and day, punctuated with lots of activity, food, lengthy speeches, and music. It was also extremely moving.
The background to our attendance is that Bright Hope World has been partnering with Dove Ministries for some time now. The focus of our involvement with them is to empower young women to become self-sustaining and avoid many of the traps that seem to draw in particularly young woman in this culture. In 2024 Touch Africa Now (TAN), the organisation which is part of Dove Ministries, set out to train 10 women in the Nyakagondo refugee camp northwest of Lira in sewing skills to enable them to support themselves. In reality 20 people showed up, and they were unwilling to turn the other 10 away. By way of background the camps in the north of Uganda are among some of the largest refugee camps in the world. An instructor was employed who travelled from Kampala to do this. As part of this training the young women received a certificate confirming a national qualification issued by the Department of Industrial Training. This is a nationally recognised certificate and comes after an exam following the six months of training.
At the end of the training and without any prior warning or knowledge, the graduates received the sewing machines they had trained on to enable them to start their own businesses. The sewing machines are manual Singer machines which are largely bullet proof.
This project has now been replicated in the satellite church in Najjembe which is in the countryside to the northwest of Kampala. This was the graduation we had been invited to attend.
The graduates of the tailoring programme really touched us. In the midst of the many speeches, it was obvious that this programme has touched many lives. The young women and one older woman who were in the programme were all very articulate about the fact they had started with nothing and now had some hope for the future. One of our team gave a message among all the speeches and, following that, there was a presentation of certificates. Finally, was the presentation of the actual sewing machines used for training to each of the trainees, which surprised the beneficiaries as they had no idea about it beforehand. Each of them received one as part of the programme arrangements. They were absolutely overjoyed and I have to say we did choke back tears. This was truly a life-changing experience for these young women. We realised that there will be plenty of hardships and difficulties ahead, but the impact of this programme through the Bright Hope World Partnership was amazing.
During the course of the day and our extensive conversations with Ephraim, we would have to say that we felt very confident that this programme should continue and that we should be supporting both the menstrual pads project through Touch Africa Now, along with sewing and tailoring projects and possibly other types of skilling arrangements. We will leave it to our partners to come up with a plan for the next steps but would be very comfortable with simply replicating what we have already seen. We do wonder whether the tailoring project should be in a slightly different area, or aimed at a slightly different group of women, simply because 10 more new tailors in the same area could possibly oversaturate the market. However, we are confident that the leadership of TAN can address this issue well.
It was exciting to see the extensive community support and the number of people that showed up, and it was especially touching and moving to see the joy in the young women's faces. That is particularly so because otherwise these women would be extremely vulnerable to early marriages, getting pregnant, and other less savoury types of income earning activity. It was a joy to visit. It was a long day sitting under a tree, meeting and talking with lots of people and listening to some quite long speeches, however it was absolutely worth it.