15 November 2001

Bonn, Germany: Laurie Moy, of McKinney, Texas, U.S.A., first began online volunteering through NetAid in March 2000. She is now the Coordinator of Volunteers for People With Disabilities, Uganda (PWDU), overseeing the work of more than 75 other online volunteers from all over the world. Here is her report after visiting her online assignment, on-site:

Winston Churchill called Uganda the Pearl of Africa. For the past year and half I've been finding out why. Uganda is beautiful. The people of Uganda are friendly, open and warm. I know all of this because I've been working with them for the past year and a half. But I'd never been to Uganda.

Since March of 2000, I have been volunteering and coordinating a group of other online volunteers for a nonprofit organization in Kampala, called People With Disabilities Uganda. I, along with about 150 other online volunteers from around the world, have been developing programs, creating a web site, publishing a newsletter, building a marketing plan, and working on various other projects…but we've never met. All our work is done online. Volunteers from more than 50 countries collaborate together to work on these projects, and produce some great results. We just happen to do it in cyberspace.

Then in mid-November, I was able to travel to Uganda, under a UNV UNISTAR contract to see first hand the results of all our hard work. What I saw was amazing. I was able to visit the program office of PWD, where young children with disabilities participating in their group therapy. Just the fact that they were there at all was a product of our online volunteers' grant writing efforts. Also, by making use of some of the research that our online volunteers had found, the teachers and therapists were using new techniques for helping these children learn their daily living skills.

Another major project that I got to see and help establish was the Children's Resource Library. For the past six months our online volunteers have been developing the idea of creating a library for children with disabilities and their parents, so that they can find information about disability as well as be exposed to positive attitudes about disability. Together, online, we researched book titles to find volumes that would be appropriate, we developed a proposal around the idea, we solicited (and received) donations…in short we CREATED this library, all online.

So on this trip I brought with me all the supplies and donations to launch the project. We had a very excited opening ceremony, speeches were made, songs were sung, people were congratulated and photos were taken. But the best part of the whole day was after the hoopla of the opening ceremony, and things died down a bit. As I was packing up some equipment, I looked over towards the library. The children and adults had congregated around the book shelves, pouring over the materials, showing each other what they were finding, discussing, and most importantly learning. That was what all our hard work was about.

I love Uganda. I knew that before I came, and the trip reinforced that for me. I was so proud to be a part of these programs and was glad to get to see it first hand. But watching those parents and children look at the books and learn new things made me even more excited to keep working. And all I could think was, "I can't wait to get back to the States so I can get back to work."