Orphans in Rural Uganda Win Robotics Competition

FOAC Foundation funding helped poor kids to enter the digital world

SANTA YNEZ, Calif., May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- It was a frightening experience for the ten youngsters from Sonrise Children's Home in Uganda.  The four-hour drive to the capital city Kampala, was exciting but also a time of worry.  How could these poor orphans from a rural village compete with well-equipped teams in a city where Internet connections and smartphones were available everywhere?

Their four-hour bus ride actually began in 2021, when volunteers from Faith of a Child Foundation visited the Sonrise Children's Home near Kamuli, Uganda.  Faith of a Child Foundation helped the orphanage to establish cellular phone service on their campus, as a new cellular tower had been built ten miles away.  Using a special antenna and repeater system, the Foundation created a bubble of cellular coverage that connected the orphanage to the outside world for the first time.

The volunteers from Faith of a Child Foundation asked the orphanage manager what projects were most needed for the welfare of the children:  Sports equipment? Solar power? Better equipment for the orphanage farm?  The answer was that the children needed STEM education, as they lacked any experience with technology and had never even changed a battery in a toy.  Faith of a Child Foundation funded the construction of a computer lab and six computers.

In this obscure part of rural Uganda, the teachers at the Sonrise Community School were required to teach computer classes, but some had never seen a computer before.  The computer lab was a tremendous success, and was quickly expanded to more than 20 workstations so that the computer lab could teach the orphans, local village children, and adults in the community.

By the end of 2023, the children had mastered basic skills and had moved on to writing code in Python.  Other Christian volunteers added LEGO robotics kits to the computer lab in 2024, giving the children a way to use their skills in fun and imaginative ways.

Aboard the bus in March 2025, ten of the kids in fifth and sixth grade took their new skills to the big city, to compete against children that had grown up surrounded by technology.  They would be given a new robotics challenge and would need to create a model, adapt the model to the local course, and work together quickly to solve the problem in time.

Despite the stronger funding and urban advantages of the other teams (such as broadband Internet access), the orphans from Sonrise were able to take the first prize for the Primary/Junior division!  

About Faith of a Child Foundation:

Based in the United States, Faith of a Child Foundation is a Christian non-profit charity (EIN 82-1403137) that supports children in developing countries in Africa and Latin America.  Every penny of donated funds since 2018 has been spent directly on these community projects, as a small number of supporters separately cover all administrative costs.  Faith DOES NOT follow the formula of corporate charity organizations: instead, Faith listens to the local people articulate their vision for solving local problems, and provides capital for local people to lead their own community.  The goal is to establish self-sustaining Christian communities that don't need charity from the outside world. Faith of a Child Foundation accepts no government grants of any kind.

Contact:

Joe Madden

 [email protected]

+1 (408) 335-4042

www.faithofachildfoundation.org

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SOURCE Faith of a Child Foundation