Hope Ministries Uganda

Through Hope Ministries Uganda: USAs partnership with Hope Ministries Uganda and Pastor Gerald Tugume, our mission is to build awareness of the plight of a forgotten people and to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to the Batwa through a holistic approach. Part of this holistic approach understands the extreme poverty and discrimination from which the Batwa come and recognizes that poverty is more than just low income. The Batwa are a pygmy tribe located in the southwest corner of Uganda. They are conservation refugees who were evicted from their rain forest home so that the Bwindi Impenetrable Rain Forest could be made into a World Heritage Site to protect the 350 endangered mountain gorillas. The land they moved to was without a forest and was foreign to them. As one of the oldest documented tribes in Africa, thousands of years of living as the Keepers of the Forest, they were changed to becoming land squatters and living scarecrows. The Batwa have been held captive by being separat...