Local businessmen help orphan relief efforts in Africa

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With the help of local surveyor Dennis Amsinger and other area volunteers, orphaned children in Uganda, Africa, will soon find solace in the City of Hope, a development of Watoto Child Care Ministries that will provide housing and academic, vocational and spiritual training.|ret||ret||tab|

Amsinger, owner of Amsinger Surveying Inc., and also the elected Webster County surveyor, recently returned to the Ozarks after spending two weeks in Uganda doing surveying work for Watoto Child Care Ministries. |ret||ret||tab|

That effort is essential considering that there are approximately 1.7 million orphaned children in Uganda, many of whom lost their parents to war, but most of whom lost their parents to AIDS. Some of the children are HIV-positive or have AIDS. |ret||ret||tab|

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Efforts for orphans|ret||ret||tab|

"Watoto" means "the children." Watoto Child Care Ministries started working with children in Uganda in 1993, founded by missionaries Gary and Marilyn Skinner. Amsinger became involved after a friend, Brent Smith owner of local company Car City mentioned the organization and the work it was doing.|ret||ret||tab|

Smith's son, a student at Christian Schools of Springfield, heard a Watoto Children's Choir sing in Springfield and asked his parents to come listen. |ret||ret||tab|

"After that choir had sung and performed there, their bus had broken down and so the principal of the school brought (Skinner) to me and asked would we look at this bus," Smith said. |ret||ret||tab|

While Smith was working on the bus, Skinner was able to share Watoto's vision and ministry with them, and that is how his involvement began. |ret||ret||tab|

These days, Smith has pared down his business so that he can devote more time to Watoto. He books choir performances and organizes volunteers from area churches who travel to Uganda and help build the children's villages. He also coordinates volunteer team visits from around the country.|ret||ret||tab|

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The villages |ret||ret||tab|

Watoto Child Care Ministries has three villages under development in Uganda. Homes in the villages each accommodate eight children and a house mother. The first village, Olive Garden, has six homes; the Biloba village has 21 homes and Bbira has 36 homes. |ret||ret||tab|

The fourth development, Nsangi the City of Hope is the one that Amsinger became involved with. The City of Hope is situated on 140 acres in Uganda. |ret||ret||tab|

"I'd expressed the need to Dennis about having to go and do a topography of this property and check a survey that had been done there, and then do a total site plan for this project, and that's what Dennis did," Smith said. |ret||ret||tab|

Amsinger has been in surveying, engineering and land development for 28 years, and has known Smith for 16 years. |ret||ret||tab|

With his background, Amsinger said, he got involved "to try to offer my services to this organization, to give them a plan that they can present to others as to what they're trying to accomplish for these orphaned kids." |ret||ret||tab|

On the portions of the land that aren't developable, the ministry will have plantations to grow produce for sale and for nourishment. Smith said the 140-acre site will have 117 homes to serve 936 children. |ret||ret||tab|

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Taking the survey|ret||ret||tab|

A Ugandan surveying company had done a boundary of the land purchased by the ministry, which Amsinger described as similar to the Arkansas hills. |ret||ret||tab|

"It's rolling, it's green, it's got undergrowth," he said, along with coffee bean plantations.|ret||ret||tab|

He noted that surveying in Uganda is very different from how it is done in the United States. Basically, what they came up with was the dimensions of the property, but no direction.|ret||ret||tab|

"So that made it very difficult to plot that on a drawing without going back around it completely. They said their survey was done by a planing table survey, which is an old means of doing topography," he said. "They have no sophisticated surveying equipment like we do. Their knowledge of basic coordinates and variance in lines and distances to create those coordinates is very limited. But that's not the way they have to survey over there, (where) to perform a survey is to make a boundary. They're a lot more lenient you go out and mark it, you take care of it and it's yours. Here in the (United States), you mark it, you record that document and everything is deeded," he said. |ret||ret||tab|

Because of problems in the other villages with erosion and drainage problems, Amsinger said he knew that "they needed to come up with a development plan, instead of just going and sticking a house here and sticking a house there; they needed a plan to better utilize the land and try to take care of problems that they had in the first two villages with erosion and water problems, drainage problems."|ret||ret||tab|

Amsinger went to the site in Uganda and did topography for a portion of the 140 acres. |ret||ret||tab|

"I've done a layout of a proposal to develop that property. While we were over there we actually prepared six pad sites for the first six homes to be built (in the City of Hope)," he said. Teams from Canada recently finished the first two of those homes, Smith said. Amsinger also visited Bbira and staked out a position for a new medical clinic there that is to be constructed in March. Once that's finished, Bbira village will be essentially complete, and it is scheduled for an Easter dedication.|ret||ret||tab|

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Materials|ret||ret||tab|

In Uganda, Smith said, it costs about $10,000 in American currency to build one of the homes used in the Watoto villages to shelter children. |ret||ret||tab|

Nearly all of the materials used for building with concrete work and brick work are made on-site. Steel rafters and tin roofs are used in the construction. Because of termites, wood isn't used for the homes and buildings.Volunteer teams of 15 to 20 workers use those materials to build the homes. Ugandan laborers also work with the volunteers. |ret||ret||tab|

Smith said that workers can make 500 bricks a day, one at a time, and it takes 3,500 bricks to build a house. |ret||ret||tab|

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Finances|ret||ret||tab|

Funding for Watoto comes from money raised by Concerts of Hope presented throughout America and around the world by Watoto Children's Choir. The organization also seeks sponsorships of $25 per month for individual children, to provide food, clothing and medical care. |ret||ret||tab|

Monthly financial pledges of various amounts are used to build and furnish homes and to cover administrative costs. Sometimes, churches and organizations elect to give a gift of $10,000 to build a new home. One-time gifts of other amounts also are accepted. |ret||ret||tab|

Smith said that so far, Watoto Child Care Ministries has raised about 1,200 children in Uganda, but its goal is to increase that number to 3,500.|ret||ret||tab|

Information about the ministry is available online at www.watoto.com.|ret||ret||tab|

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