Partnership at Mercy For Life Africa is not a logo on a banner. It is people in the courtyard under the mango tree. It is a visiting friend on the school steps, buried in children. It is a girl named Olive sitting beside someone who came to see her. It is the whole team on the porch under the letters MERCY FOR LIFE AFRICA — staff, friends, children, the door that has a name on it.
Director Nalubega Fausta still walks the red-earth road with the sisters. The house was born in a parish. The work still walks with the church, and with families from as far as Idaho who tested the work in person and then stayed.
If you have been looking for this organisation — a Ugandan NGO in Makindye, a school, a choir, a way to sponsor a child — this is what standing with us looks like. Come. Or send a gift and write your name. The children already know when someone has come for them.
From the field
The photographs and films of this story.
Partners & volunteers
Friends under the mango tree
Staff and visiting friends stand in the courtyard of the house in Makindye. Partnership here is not a logo on a banner. It is people who came, stood in the dust, and stayed for the work.
Partners & volunteers
At the office door
A visiting friend stands with a Mercy School girl beside the red pillar and the Education sign. Sponsors who come in person meet the child whose fees they pay.
Partners & volunteers
Walking with the sisters
Director Nalubega Fausta with a religious sister on the red-earth road. The house was born in a parish. The work still walks with the church.
Partners & volunteers
The children found her first
A visiting friend is surrounded on the school steps. Mercy School is not a distant bursary. It is a courtyard of children who know when someone has come to see them.
Partners & volunteers
In the schoolyard
Director Nalubega Fausta, a visiting friend, and the children behind them. The work looks like this on an ordinary afternoon: dust, grins, a wooden cross, a house that is not empty.
Partners & volunteers
Olive and a friend of the house
A learner named Olive sits with a long-time friend of Mercy For Life Africa. Sponsorship here has a face on both sides of the photograph.
Partners & volunteers
A laugh in the chapel
Director Nalubega Fausta and a visiting friend in the Africa-map shirts, under a painting of children in the water. Partnership here has a pew, a microphone, and a laugh that does not need translating.
Partners & volunteers
The porch that says the name
Staff, visiting friends, and children on the steps under the letters MERCY FOR LIFE AFRICA. This is the house in Makindye. If you have been looking for this organisation, this is the door.
Partners & volunteers
A visiting friend, a child of the house
A young volunteer stands with a Mercy School girl in the courtyard. Sponsorship and partnership look the same in this photograph: someone who came, and a child who is glad they did.
Partners & volunteers
A family at the office door
A visiting family sit with Mercy School children under the Mercy Schools stars on the glass. The work is not a remote bursary. It is a morning on these tiles.
Partners & volunteers
Orange uniforms, a visitor on the tiles
A visiting friend sits with two Mercy School girls in the orange dresses. IN GOD WE TRUST is stitched on the pocket. That is the school the fees pay for — a child you can sit beside.
Partners & volunteers
The same afternoon, more arms
Four Mercy School children in orange crowd a visiting friend. The courtyard is loud. The work is this close.
Partners & volunteers
Under the mural of mercy
A visiting friend in a scripture shirt stands with two girls against the Jesus mural at the gate. Come and see is still the invitation. These two already did.