ARTICLES

Campus ministry leaders start school in Uganda

By Steve Neill
Of The Catholic Virginian

Two graduates of the College of William and Mary credit their positive experience with service projects through the college’s Catholic campus ministry program to being the springboard for their joint efforts to open a school in Uganda.

Doug Bunch, a 2002 graduate of William and Mary and from its law school in 2006, and Edward Branagan, of the class of 2003, feel their efforts with those of other alumni can create educational opportunities where they currently don’t exist.

To date, they have raised half of the $32,000 they say they need to open a school. They hope to raise another $16,000 by the end of this coming summer.

Last May the two men established Global Playground which was incorporated in New York.

“Our primary audience is young professionals,” Mr. Bunch said.

“We feel they’re in the best position to give back financially and who probably have the least opportunity to do so because their day-to-day life is so consumed by their work,” added the lawyer who grew up in Waynesboro and now works for a D.C. law firm.

Mr. Branagan, who grew up in Gaithersburg, Md., and now lives in Manhattan, pointed out that he and Mr. Bunch both made a trip to Uganda last fall and met with government officials who liked the idea of the new school. They spent a week at Christ the King Church and School in Kampala.

“For us, it was a great experience,” Mr. Branagan said. “We learned that this is really what we want to do.”

But the visit did not come without being touched by the poverty in which many live.

“We saw a girl with flies on her face and a boy without clothes on,” Mr. Bunch said.

“This is the suffering Christ and it renewed the sense of compassion that started here (at William and Mary’s campus ministry).”

More than half and perhaps as many as 60 percent of the people in Kampala are Catholic.

“The Catholics we met are such devout people,” Mr. Bunch asserted.

“They applaud at the consecration at Mass,” he added. “We asked them why and they said it was because they were so grateful.”

Both Mr. Branagan and Mr. Bunch have identified a site in Wakiso, a rural district around Kampala, Uganda’s capital, as the site of the proposed school.

“Wakiso is a large district and more than 50 percent of the children do not have access to education,” Mr. Branagan said.

He cited a program known as Building Tomorrow which was established by another William and Mary graduate, George Srour.

“Building Tomorrow is a partner organization which will oversee the day-to-day construction of the school,” Mr. Branagan said, adding that the school will have eight classrooms with about 300 students.

The Ugandan government will pay the teachers’ salaries.

“We’re not going to pay the entire cost of the school,” Mr. Bunch said. “In the long run, the government and the community will be invested in the school.

“We want to give them a sense of empowerment.”

Reflecting on their involvement in William and Mary’s campus ministry program, they both said their involvement lasted all four years as undergraduates.

“I know that each year I did something with CCM,” Mr. Branagan said.

The first year he sang in the folk group and during his second year he got involved in fundraising.

“We held car washes, had CCM gold cards which offered 10 percent discounts at local venues in Williamsburg, and wrote letters to CCM alumni requesting donations.

“I remember we raised over $3,000 that year,” he said.

During Mr. Branagan’s junior year he served as coordinator of the spring break service trip to Hurley in southwest Virginia in which Catholic campus ministry students helped local residents.

“Then I led and coordinated the Philadelphia trip to Sarnelli House where we served the homeless and the urban poor through a soup kitchen,” he said.

“My involvement with Catholic campus ministry was more straightforward,” Mr. Bunch said.

“I helped with liturgy all four years,” he explained, adding that he was a Eucharistic minister, lector and the last two years was sacristan at the Sunday morning Mass.

“We came to appreciate the role of education,” Mr. Branagan said.

During one summer as an undergraduate he went to Bosnia where he taught Bosnian children. An anonymous donor from St. Bede parish in Williamsburg and a gift from the Reves Center of William and Mary enabled six students to go to Bosnia for the summer service project.

“It was really on that trip that I saw how education could be used,” Mr. Branagan said. “The seeds were planted in that experience.”

When the school in Uganda becomes a reality, the two men will not rest on their laurels. They hope that in ten years they can establish other schools where now there are none in developing countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

“We’d also like cross-cultural dialogue among the students at our schools as a way of promoting tolerance and understanding,” Mr. Bunch said.

Neither of the two sees their outreach beyond the capability of others who are so inspired.

“We’re two ordinary Catholic campus ministry alums who are passionate about this,” Mr. Branagan said.

“We really feel this is one way of bringing about the Kingdom of heaven in our lives and in their lives.”

Mr. Bunch agreed.

“Being an active Catholic in CCM engendered compassion for those who have less than we do and an obligation to help them,” he said.

“When we went to Uganda, it really hits you right in the eye.”

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