The president speaks

The Ugandan Women are Noticed at the White House

by Santiago Ramos

President George Bush was among those moved by the story of the Meeting Point International in Kampala. On June 26, 2007, in a speech delivered at the National Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Conference on “Innovations in Effective Compassion,” Bush declared that “Bureaucracies can put money in people’s hands, but they cannot put hope in a person’s heart,” and in recounting many stories from the field, he mentioned this from Uganda:
“There’s an interesting story that I want to share with you about Ugandan women who helped–have been helped by PEPFAR. These were good souls who worked in a mine. They crushed rocks into gravel by hand. And it is tough work, really hard work. Then they heard about Katrina, and somehow they scraped together $1,000, and they gave it to the U.S. Embassy for the storm’s victim. And one woman said with pride: ‘We are now donors.”’