1. The Classroom Is Only the Beginning
A word from Enock De Assis, Executive Director
During my last visit to Bringing Hope to the Family in Uganda, I stood watching children run across a playground where the grass had been worn away by many small feet, past a few rusty pieces of equipment that had given almost all they had to give and then a little more. Off to one side, another group of boys and girls had a soccer game going. Nobody seemed to be keeping score. They were just playing.
It would have been easy to see only children playing. But I saw something more.
On that playground, confidence was growing. Friendships were forming. Children were learning to cooperate, to take responsibility, to encourage one another. A boy was organizing the others and quietly becoming a leader before anyone had given him a title. And the children were being reminded that joy belongs to them too.
What you would not know from watching them is how much many of those children have already lost. Across the schools our partners lead in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, many students have lost one or both parents. Others come from families displaced by war, from extreme poverty, from illness, from homes too fragile to hold them. They arrive carrying burdens no child should have to carry.
And then something happens. In the classroom — and for some, in the children’s homes our partners run — they find people who know their name and expect them back tomorrow. Community. Love. Care. Safety. A place where they belong. Those words sound soft until you watch what they do in a child who has lived without them.
This is why education cannot be limited to textbooks, examinations, uniforms, or school fees. Education also includes trusted relationships, mentoring, faith, responsibility, play, and the slow discovery of someone recognizing a child’s gifts before that child can see them.
This is why ThinSpace Africa invests in education..
Ehen we participate in a child’s education, character, and confidence, we are investing in the leaders who will one day transform their own communities and, perhaps, their nations. It is what Ibrahim’s story in this issue actually demonstrates — and it took twelve years.
The classroom matters so much. But it is only the beginning.
Thank you for educating children with us, inside and outside classrooms, in villages and towns of Africa.
Enock De Assis
2. From Tribal Conflict to International Relations
Voices From Africa — by Ibrahim Savo
Ibrahim Savo serves as Social Media Intern with ThinSpace Africa. He wrote this account himself and gave his permission to publish it.
My name is Ibrahim, and my story begins in Bunia, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
My childhood was not easy. I was born into a time of tribal conflict, fear, and uncertainty. My mother was Balendu, while my father came from a tribe that was considered an enemy. Their relationship was not accepted by the people around them, and when I was still very young, my mother left. I remember seeing her with my uncle under a palm tree. She looked back at me, and then I watched her figure vanish. I was too young to understand everything, but I understood that someone I loved was gone.
Losing my parents and growing up without a stable family affected me deeply. I became a child of the streets. I learned very early what hunger, loneliness, fear, and survival meant. There were nights when gunfire and explosions were part of the environment around me. I did not have a home in the way other children understand home. I searched for safety wherever I could find it.
When the violence grew worse, I ran into the forest. I was still a child. For several days I survived by searching for food, sleeping in trees, and following the sunlight because I had no other direction. Eventually I found my way back to Bunia and later lived in a refugee camp. I experienced many things no child should experience. I was separated from a normal childhood, exposed to violence, and at one point taken by an armed group and forced into a life I never chose.
Those years taught me endurance. I learned how to survive. But I also learned that survival alone was not enough. Somewhere inside me, I kept believing my life could become something different.
Faith became one of the greatest sources of my courage. Even when I had nothing, I believed God had not forgotten me. There were moments when I should have lost hope, but something inside me kept saying, keep going. I began to believe that my circumstances were not the final definition of who I was.
One of the most important encounters of my life happened when I was fourteen, in 2014. I went to an English-speaking church in Congo, where I met an American volunteer named Scott Prewett from California. I remember being amazed by him. I had never imagined that someone from a completely different world could take an interest in me. I told him I wanted to go to America with him. He did not laugh at my dream. He told me that maybe one day it could be possible.
Before he left Congo, he gave me his Facebook contact. It was a small thing. To me it meant something much bigger. I had met someone who saw me beyond my circumstances.
Eventually I left Congo and traveled toward Uganda. The journey was difficult. I walked long distances, crossed Lake Albert by boat, and arrived with almost nothing. In Kampala, I slept on verandas and sometimes at petrol stations. I washed dishes to get food. I went to internet cafés trying to reach Scott. There were many times I wondered what would happen to me.
Then, after about four years, Scott finally contacted me.
That connection led me to people who changed the direction of my life. I met Aunt Faith, who helped me reach the Bringing Hope to the Family community. Being welcomed there meant more than food, shelter, and education. It meant belonging. For someone who had spent much of his childhood feeling alone, belonging was powerful.
Education began changing how I saw myself. I realized I was capable of learning, growing, and contributing. People began recognizing gifts in me that I had not fully recognized in myself.
Dr. Robert Miller, a Canadian volunteer who visited Uganda while I was in the children’s home, offered to support my university education. Through people like him, I began to understand that receiving help did not mean I had to remain dependent forever. It could become a foundation from which I could eventually help others.
Today I am a second-year student studying International Relations and Governance at Uganda Christian University. I chose International Relations because I have seen what conflict, displacement, poverty, and division do to individuals and communities. I want to understand the systems behind these problems and become part of building better solutions.
My education has given me more than a degree. It has given me a wider vision of the world and helped me understand that my voice has value. I also serve alongside Pastor Enock De Assis as Social Media Intern with ThinSpace Africa, helping tell the stories of the people and organizations ThinSpace serves. It has given me a place to contribute my creativity, my ideas, my communication skills, and my own experience. I am learning that I do not have to wait until I become someone important before I can contribute. I can serve with what I have today.
My journey has taught me that moving from receiving support to supporting others is part of becoming. I will never forget the people who helped me. I also want my life to become an answer to the kindness I received.
I still have many dreams. I want to become a man of integrity, a leader who understands people, someone who can contribute to peace, development, and opportunity in Africa and beyond. I especially want young people who have experienced displacement, poverty, or abandonment to discover that their circumstances do not have to determine their future.
If I could speak to a young refugee or orphan who feels their future has disappeared, I would say this: do not allow your present circumstances to become the definition of your future. I know what it feels like to have almost nothing. I know what it means to be lonely and uncertain. But I also know that a small opportunity — one relationship, one decision, one lesson, one moment of faith — can change the direction of a life.
I am still becoming. I have not arrived at the destination I dream about. But I am no longer the child standing outside the airport fence, wondering what the world looks like beyond it. I am learning to participate in that world and, one day, to help build a better one.
To everyone who has walked alongside me — those who fed me, taught me, prayed for me, encouraged me, sponsored my education, opened doors, and simply believed in me — thank you. Your kindness became part of my story.
I also believe God was writing a story through all of it.
I came from dust, conflict, loneliness, and uncertainty. Today I carry hope, education, faith, relationships, and a growing sense of purpose. My past is part of me. It is not the limit of where I can go.
3. Building More Than a School
Partner Spotlight: Kenneth & Beatrice Kabagambe, Noah’s ARC By Lisa Glenn, educator and ThinSpace Africa board member
In 2017, I had the opportunity to say yes to sharing educational best practices with teams of teachers in Uganda. As an educator, I knew at once this would change my life. I was excited to meet the teachers at Noah’s ARC and to meet Kenneth and Beatrice, their founders. I had never been to Uganda. I have returned five times since.
No amount of training or preparation could have prepared me for the culture shock. Power outages, water issues, and the bumpy roads to Kyenjojo were all unfamiliar. But I quickly learned that the real culture shock was not external. It was in my heart.
At Noah’s ARC, people come before tasks. We arrived with so many practices we hoped to implement with the teachers. We learned quickly that to Ken and Beatrice, people mattered more than best practices.
I had traveled to Uganda with a very Western view. Over the following days, and by no choice of my own, my attitude began to change. I began to see that the day-to-day interactions with people were God’s primary vehicle for redemptive work and transformation, not a distraction from it. Without authentic relationships, change cannot occur in a community. I was not there to impart wisdom. I was there to experience a beautiful community.
Ken and Beatrice play an essential role in ensuring students receive an excellent education at Noah’s ARC. Just as relationships open a door to discipleship, so does education. An excellent education is not simply passing information from one person to another. It develops the mind, body, and soul of a child. That is what I saw each day, and in every year that followed. The teachers there have an extraordinary opportunity to disciple students through the quality of the education they give them. I could tell many stories of students profoundly shaped by their teachers and mentors at that school. Now, with more than 512 children, there are many more stories to tell.
Though I am in a different place and a different role now, I am glad to keep locking arms with Noah’s ARC, and I am grateful for the prayers, encouragement, and generosity that ThinSpace Africa brings as a partner. My hope is that as the scope of impact grows at Noah’s ARC, the heart of the ministry stays exactly the same.
I am proud to partner with them. If you would like to as well, you can become a partner at thinspaceafrica.org. You can also meet Ken and Beatrice for yourself in this short video. [link to TSA YouTube video]
4. Education for Transformation
By Wendy Ridenour
For eight years, my friend and sister in faith, Lisa Glenn, told me stories while we walked around a lake near our homes in Los Angeles, talking and praying together about life, faith, and grandchildren. She described a California dentist and his wife with heart and hope for Ugandan children. A local doctor and his wife with the commitment and capability to serve. A foundation formed out of generosity and gratitude. A director with experience and availability. Two accountants in Uganda who parented more than 500 school-age children. A sister school with hundreds more children nearby. A community medical clinic serving all ages. More work being done in the Congo. And a board of directors overseeing it all.
Really? This is all happening, with people here and people there?
It’s true. Lisa was serving on the board of a nonprofit organization called ThinSpace Africa. I wanted to go. But my summers were filled to overflowing — each year our family welcomed a new grandchild, which kept me home. Until last summer. In 2025, with no new grandbabies arriving, I was free. I joined the team traveling to Uganda to partner with Noah’s ARC and Bringing Hope to the Family.
Life has never been the same.
Joining ThinSpace Africa’s educator team remains a highlight of my life. As an elementary teacher, a ministry wife, a parent, a grandparent, and a follower of Christ, I found that ThinSpace Africa and its partners enriched my vision of what God can do when people commit to simply serve together.
It humbled me as a teacher to see how little can go so far. The staff and children at both schools radiate joy and love and success — and they were doing that long before I arrived and have kept doing it since I left. That is what convinced me. This work does not depend on visitors. It only needs support.
So it has motivated me to give monthly. And it has inspired me to sponsor the education of college-age students, so their future can be filled with God’s “good plans, to give you a future and a hope.”
Lives transformed through opportunity and the commitment of a caring community. It calls me to praise God for the ThinSpace partners in Uganda and Congo, for the board near and far, and for the chance to share with you what happens when friends tell friends and invite them to come along.
Wendy Ridenour is a Los Angeles-area educator who traveled to Uganda with ThinSpace Africa in 2025, bringing her experience and passion for education to our team and partners. Wendy and her husband, Rev. Dale Ridenour, live in Southern California. We are deeply grateful for her support and for the way she has shared this story with her friends, family, and church community.
Sponsor a Student
Behind each of these needs is a child with a name, a story, and God-given potential.
Bringing Hope to the Family — Uganda — $70 / month School fees, uniforms, scholastic materials, and the daily necessities that keep a child in class. Families here are doing everything they can to keep their children in school. Sponsorship closes the gap that remains.
Noah’s ARC — Uganda — $150 / month Eight young people have earned grades placing them in the top one percent of students in Uganda. That achievement is theirs — their discipline, their long nights, their determination. Tuition, boarding, and materials are what stand between them and university.
Rebuilders Ministry — Amani Village, DR Congo — $150 / month A classroom is being prepared for children whose families have been displaced by war and ongoing conflict. Tuition and related support give a child a safe place to learn and begin again.
Give where it’s needed most — any amount, monthly or one-time Your gift goes to the greatest current need across all three partners.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” — Matthew 18:10
“Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.” — Psalm 82:3
Questions? Write to [email protected]. We would be glad to talk it through with you.