Gleeson’s dream comes true 28 years later

Kitgum. When 44-year-old Irene Gleeson made her first visit to Uganda in 1988, she promised to address a couple of challenges faced by Ugandan children in the north.
Ms Gleeson, an Australian, had come for a vacation along with her husband but was astonished by the kind of life Ugandan children were living.
“Back in Australia, my children and grand children would have whatever they needed; good food, education and medication, among other basics, but when I visited Kitgum I saw malnourished children who did not have access to food, clean water, medication, shelter and food; I asked God to use me and reach out to these communities,” said Gleeson in an interview in October 2012.
Though she succumbed to cancer in July 2013, her dream was realised through her Irene Gleeson Foundation (IGF) based in the heart of Kitgum Town where the locals prefer calling her Mama Irene.
On July 10, Mr Okello Oryem (Foreign Affairs state minister) and Mr Jacob Oulanya (Deputy Speaker) will commission the organisation’s business school block which Kiffasi says will help many youth acquire technical skills to help then create jobs.
The annual Mama Irene memorial service slated for July 18 at Boma grounds is set to attract more than 20,000 people from within Uganda and abroad, according to IGF’s development manager Trent.
Though Mama Irene was in Uganda briefly in 1988, she went back to Australia to sell her properties and returned to Uganda in 1990 to stay permanently. She registered IGF in 1990 as a non-governmental organisation.
First Lady Janet Museveni offered her an 18-acre piece of land in Kitgum District where she packed her caravan under a Tamarind tree and started giving free medication, food and English lessons to children, most of whom were orphans and former child soldiers; Gleeson was a teacher by profession.
“If she did not heed to God’s call and moved down to reach out to these children, northern Uganda would be far behind from other regions of the country in as far as education and health is concerned. She was a brave woman who gave up all for the sake of the Ugandan child. More than 20,000 children have gone through this organisation and are living a much better life because of her,” says John Paul Kiffasi, IGF’s executive director.
The organisation employs more than 400 staff most of whom were picked from the streets and raised by Gleeson. It has four primary schools in Kitgum and Lamwo districts with a total number of more than 4,000 pupils, a business/technical school with more than 600 students, a radio station, a hospital and a poultry farm.
Before her death, she had started to construct a three-storied maternal hospital to curb the number of mothers dying in northern Uganda during childbirth. Though she died when the building was at the foundation level, it has been completed and will be commissioned by the Minister of Health on July 17.

The numbers
4,000
The number of pupils in the four primary schools under the Irene Glesson Foundation.

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