Our 4x4 bumped down 10 kilometers of rutted muddy roads. 
The roads were flanked with vegetation—lots of tall grasses and bushes and, beyond them, rolling fields that are either overgrown with bush or planted with crops like cassava, potatoes, and banana trees. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether what you're seeing is intentionally planted or just wild vegetation. There are a few homes sprinkled along the roadside. Each one is small dwelling big enough for one or two rooms, either made out of sticks and mud or upgraded to hand-made bricks. The roofs are mostly thatched, but a few homes have metal roofs. Most of the houses have a cleared open space around them, no vegetation right around the house and cleared dirt yards. That's to keep the mosquitoes away. Even though it's a school day, there are usually groups of kids in the yards or walking along the roads, carrying big yellow jerry cans of water or tending cows or just hanging out. We're in the village of Rubona in the Kibaale District in western Uganda. 
At the end of our morning drive, we arrive at a small church building surrounded by kids dressed in their school uniforms—matching bright orange shirts, green skirts and trousers—they burst into greeting songs as we arrive and pile out of our vehicles. They're using the church as a temporary school building, while members of the community build a second semi-permanent school building in the field behind the church. We go to inspect the school that is under construction. Right now, it's just a shell structure made of sticks—big enough for three rectangular classrooms. Soon, it will have a corrugated metal roof and mud and wattle walls. Then they'll have enough classroom space for 200 kids. Their next project is a brick school building that will be built nearby. That will take another year or two to mobilize. But these people are really proud of what they’ve accomplished. There are about 50 men and women who have assembled to tell us their stories.
The village elders and the local council member greet us with speeches. The kids sing some more songs and dance, and then our hostess, a young Ugandan woman in her 20s by the name of Ninsiima Susan, tells us their story. She is an intern from the pilot class of the African Rural University. She was placed in this region as a rural transformation specialist in September 2009, after studying a curriculum of integrated rural development for three years at the fledgling African Rural University. Susan is a member of the pilot class of young woman student/researchers who are testing out the curriculum of the University, based on their feedback and their successes working in rural villages like this one as rural transformation specialists. By next September, Susan will have earned her degree: a Bachelor of Science in Rural Transformation—the first such program in the world!
Susan was placed in this community in September 2009. This is one of 12 villages she works with, serving about 1,500 households. When she arrived in the district, with the blessing of the local government council leader, she went around, introduced herself, got to know the people in each household, and invited them to planning meetings. The county provided her with a one-room hut to live in. No running water. No plumbing. Just a roof over her head. She had to build her own latrine, clean up the area around the hut, install a smokeless stove, and plant a small garden to help feed herself. She walks from village to village, about 8 kilometers per day. She loves her job! But she would love to have a bike!
In each community planning meeting, Susan led a visioning workshop in which the villagers listed out their priorities for community development and agreed on the one or two projects they’d like to embark on to achieve their visions. In Rubona, Susan explained, their top priority was health, which she knew she could help them with by teaching and showing them how to improve sanitation and nutrition. She offered to arrange to have Functional Adult Literacy classes for the villagers—this is a learn-by-doing course that provides education and basic skills in sanitation, nutrition, and basic income generation, as well as basic reading and writing. The women are usually the first to sign up for these classes, but their husbands often join in when they begin to see the positive changes that their wives are making around the household—boiling water, building a better latrine, insisting that everyone wash their hands, getting rid of the brush around the house, setting up mosquito nets, and beginning a kitchen garden to supplement their nutrition.
Their second goal was education. (In rural Uganda, as in many African countries, the government does not provide schools. Each village has to build and maintain their own schools, hire their own teachers, and build the school up to the point that the government will begin to provide resources—teachers' salaries, books, buildings, and maintenance.) Rubona's only school was being temporarily housed in a one-room church that the parish priest had made available to the community. The room could accommodate about 30 students of all ages. There was one teacher.
Once the community had decided that education was important, Susan agreed to help them organize to achieve that vision. She convinced the Local Council leader to ask the county government for a plot of land. They were granted 5 acres, right next to the church building that was acting as a temporary school. Then Susan mobilized the villagers to build a mud and wattle temporary school building with a thatched roof out of locally available materials and their own labor. The work party of men and women assembled every Tuesday and Thursday, and, within a couple of months, they had a temporary (the roof leaks and there are no walls between classes) school building large enough to take in another 60 kids. The benches the kids sit on are also built by the parents. Now that they had built their first school, the villagers decided to keep going. They wanted a better and bigger school to accommodate the rest of the children in the area. Susan told the villagers that if they wanted a school building with a metal roof to keep the rain out better, they'd need to collect enough money to pay for the materials. They'd also need to be willing to contribute to support another two teachers.
Each family was able to contribute about a dollar to the school building project. That was enough to buy half the iron sheets for the roof and to get going, with a lot of sweat equity. By the time we arrived for our visit, the villagers were about to pass the hat again to buy the second half of the roofing materials. Our small contributions for metal sheets and more tools were greatly appreciated.
There are now 150 children crowded into the school rooms that are currently available, from nursery school age to fifth grade. As soon as the villagers complete the new school, they can add a couple of more grades, extending the educational opportunities from 5th grade through 7th grade.
Rubona is just one of 15 communities that Susan has been working with for a year and a half. In each one, there are amazing transformations taking place as people begin to plan and carry out their own community development projects—water sources are being cleaned up and protected, new roads are being built, lots of schools are springing up around the countryside, people are healthier, happier, and their kids are getting an education. Families are learning how to farm more productively, how to cooperate in selling crops and crafts at a better profit, and how to save money and grant micro-loans to others in the community.
And this is all being done, village by village, by young women with a dream—a dream of helping their local rural communities flourish. 
For more information see the African Rural University. If you want to support Susan and the other interns to help them buy bicycles to make their lives easier, you can make a tax-deductible contribution and write in "Bicycles for ARU Interns" with your contribution.
Susan and her fellow ARU interns are empowering Ugandans to transform ther vllages.
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