Thank you for considering a donation to Hands Across Nations.

There are many organizations which are doing positive things in Africa.  It is critical, then, that you know who we are, what we are doing specifically and how, and what are the outcomes and benefits of how we are spending HAN’s donated funds.

A short history of how we started and how we operate

1.  Keith and Carolyn Jones, from Washington State in the U.S. are the Co-Directors, “on the ground” in Lira, N. Uganda. Carolyn has been going to Uganda since 2001, and Keith since 2009. We have lived there full time since 2013.
2. We are dedicated to stretching every dollar to it’s maximum use, and daily accounting for expenditures by our staff.
3. At first, the focus was on Carolyn doing short term mission trips for teaching/training in Physical Therapy, overseeing clean water projects, starting a sewing school and supporting students in school.
4. Since 2012, due to high illiteracy of the Lango tribal people in the villages of N. Uganda, often as high as 85%+, we realized our focus needed to be narrowed to training in reading and writing.  A 20 year war, ending in 2007, had led to this horrendous situation.  Our program, using a method pioneered by Literacy and Evangelism International, Tulsa, OK, U.S.A., is called “Learning to Read to Read the Bible”.  In the prisons we have also started classes for English (Ugandan national language) as a second language.
5. We are now working full time with a small Ugandan staff, training teachers, setting up classes, distributing primers, blackboards and reading glasses, and setting up classes in prisons and villages, along with lepers and the disabled.   It is our strong desire to serve the poorest of the poor.  Recently we have started setting up libraries in prisons.
6. By printing our own reading materials we are able to keep our costs very low.  We also require our learners in the villages to purchase them for just over our cost.  Prisoners, Lepers and the disabled receive materials without cost.  Our trained teachers are 100% unpaid volunteers, seeing this as their ministry to their neighbors, loving them as they love themselves.
7. Doors are opening everywhere  – there is no shortage of opportunities.  There are nearly 20,000 learners in classes, more than 3,000 teachers trained and over 1,400 have graduated and passed literacy exams since the first class started in 2014.
8. Private outside donations, not HAN donations, have funded our airline transportation, most marketing items and tools, our two 1994 Toyota Land Cruisers, and our washing machine and dryer.   Keith and I are full time non salary volunteers.  Therefore donations go almost exclusively toward funding the projects and programs.