Meet Wellen Aturinde, the 26-year-old IT graduate giving underprivileged children a new lease of life

One day, in 2016 while on his senior six vacation, Wellen Aturinde found a young girl crying by the roadside because she had been denied entry to school for not paying fees.

“I felt touched because I had gone through the same situation during the whole of my education career. I returned the little girl to her home but what I had seen kept on puzzling me,” Aturinde said, minutes into our interview.

A few weeks later, he thought of a “wild” idea of at least ensuring the girl whom he had identified as Rebecca returns to school.

“I went and talked to her mother and requested to be allowed to take her photo so I could try to find someone who could fund her education. I posted the photo on social media and later, Michelle Smith, a woman from Australia offered to sponsor Rebecca’s education,” he said.

Aturinde says that he realized something had to be done to help many other unprivileged children.

Whereas he was still in his senior six vacation, the then 21-year-old was determined to do something to help change the status quo.

He then thought of setting up an organization that would help look after underprivileged children.

He would use the same tactics as he had done earlier to come to the aid of Rebecca.

“I realized that since I had been able to help Rebecca get a new lease of life, maybe I could be able to help more children by seeking sponsorship for them using the power of social media,” he said

He said that throughout these thoughts, the idea of starting an organization that he later named Children Missions Charity Organization was born.

“With the help of my younger sister, Rachael Natukunda, my dad and step mum, we started the charity organization with our home in Wakiso as the centre where the vulnerable kids would come every Saturday to play games together, read the Bible, share stories, eat together, but above all pray together for God to help us get sponsors for their educational needs,” he said.

He said he focused mainly on the education of the unprivileged children because he thinks this forms an integral basis for any successful life.

Aturinde said by the time he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Nkumba University, the charity organization was up and running.

Growth

According to the 26-year-old, as years passed by, the charity organization has grown in terms of the number of children they are looking after.

He said the organization currently looks after 100 unprivileged children from both Western and Central Uganda.

“We support these children through providing a scholarship that pays 70% of their school tuition and supporting them through other various programs that can help them achieve their goals through education,” he said.

“The organisations however have more than 300 scholarship applications from different families seeking for education help.”

Aturinde said owing to the large number of applications seeking educational support from the charity organization, they started a school construction project in Kanungu, a district in the South-western part of the country that he says would be complete by 2024.

“We want to use the school to support more vulnerable children to access high-quality education.”

Challenges

As they say the road to success is not a smooth one and Aturinde said the charity organization has encountered some challenges.

He says they lack enough funds to completely look after as many unprivileged children as they would like, in addition there are other administration costs.

“Because of the high dropout rate of children, the number of those we look after has gone up but we have a shortage of funds to support many of them,” he said

“We have got many difficulties in getting grants and funders to support our mission and vision. We also don’t have enough income generating projects to help us get surplus income to support the charity organization.”

He said that whereas they have written proposals for assistance, they have not been very successful partly because they lack professionals in writing proposals.

“I appeal to well-wishers to come to the help of the charity so that we can help unprivileged children achieve their dreams,” Aturinde said.