Ira students’ UIL documentary aims to assist African orphans program
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Ira ISD students created a greeting video message to send to the Hope for AIDS Orphans program in Uganda. Pictured seated are (l-r) Shyia Hill, Brayden White, Asher Fowlkes, Karson Valentine, Ainsley Manning and Kylie Miller. Standing are Jessica Heiskell, Sydney Mathis, Breauna Hall, Matthew Brazil, Kolten Welch and Nathan Goodwin. Other photos on this page show children who are housed in the program’s orphanage and featured in the documentary.
Ira ISD juniors did more than just tell people about the spread of AIDS and other diseases in Africa, they reached out to help the victims.
As part of University Interscholastic League (UIL) competition, the students compiled a documentary about the situation of disease victims in Jinja, Uganda, but didn’t stop there — they took their project a step further by making efforts to also help the Ugandan AIDS orphans that were in their documentary.
“Many schools create documentaries about their football team or their town, but we wanted to be different.” Ira junior Karson Valentine said. “The rapid spread of AIDS is wiping out (Jinja’s), population rapidly, decreasing life expectancy to 42 years old and causing many children to become orphans, so we wanted to raise awareness.”
Valentine said the class came across the Hope for AIDS Orphans sponsorship program online and got in contact with the founder, Daniel Mwebaza of Jinja.
Mwebaza started the charity because he was an orphan himself. He started the program in 2014 when he was 23 years old.
The sponsorship program he created allows individuals to donate any amount of money to go towards food, clothes, books and medicine, or to sponsor a child.
“We communicated for months through Facebook, starting in October,” Ira junior Kolten Welch said. “He would send a video and we would send a video back. Seeing the pictures and videos of the kids getting their water out of a ditch or barely having clothes and shoes really made me realize how grateful I am.”
Welch said everyone was overwhelmed with sympathy for the orphans after creating the film and wanted to do more to help.
On Jan. 22, the students held a Movie Day fundraiser in the school’s cafetorium to collect money for the orphans sponsor program.
Students paid to watch a movie and paid for drinks and popcorn.
Technology instructor Walt Burt said the students raised almost $900, which will either be used to sponsor a child or buy a water filter and other necessities for the region.
“We wanted to do more than just make a video, we wanted to step in and help because they need clothes, clean water and food,” Jessica Heiskell said. “I hope this video makes it to the (UIL) state championship so (the orphans program) can get help from other people because of our video. You see this stuff on TV all the time, but I didn’t really understand what they were going through until interacting with (Mwebaza).”
Ira juniors have not placed before in the UIL competition, but Burt said he is hopeful this video will break the losing streak.
The juniors will learn results sometime next week. The top six regional winners will go to Austin for the state competition.
To contribute to Hope for Aids Orphans and to watch the Ira juniors UIL documentary, visit Hopeforaidsorphans.org.