In June 2009, Cody Lidster left his home in Texas and headed for Uganda in East Africa, to spend six months working with New Hope Uganda.  Cody will use his knowledge from SNU and the International Economic Development course, along with the practical knowledge he gained from growing up on a farm in Texas, to help New Hope develop a microfinance program for its vocational and secondary school graduates.  He will also work with New Hope to expand their newly started maize mill to make it available to the entire community surrounding New Hope.

Cody Lidster’s Internship Application for Morningstar 

            I have committed to working at New Hope Uganda (NHU) for six months from the middle of June to December, 2009.  My initial plan was to work through the Morningstar program in all areas including the ‘practical’ hands-on internship on work in an international setting.  However, God closed the doors in the areas originally planned and opened the door in other areas.  Anticipating a Morningstar internship, I have completed the first section of the Morningstar program in academic study by completing the International Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation course offered at SNU and have even furthered my preparedness by also taking the International Law and International Management courses offered at SNU.   I received A’s in each of these classes.

 

            The second area of the program is analytical field work.  I have already begun this process through my class studies while at SNU and plan to complete my research and study while in the field in Uganda. I will be documenting this mission/internship and will be submitting two interim reports, the first after being at New Hope for 2 months and the second after 4 months, and a final report of the things that I have learned.  These reports will be coordinated with Dr. Herskowitz.  I will also offer suggestions for New Hope Uganda (the children’s center at which I will be working in Uganda) on what they could do differently or better and explain how Morningstar’s mission was advanced by my time there.

 

            The third area of the program is the actual international experience through the internship. The purpose of the international internship is to give the student intern hands-on experience and training in international development.  My work at New Hope will fall under this requirement for the goal and mission of Morningstar.  First, I have been asked to work with Geoff Britton, the manager responsible for the vocational school and business projects at New Hope, to help start New Hope’s micro-financing program for the vocational school graduates. I will be assisting in the very area of study in which the International Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation class focused on. This will be a great opportunity to work and learn in one of the most active areas of international development, microfinance.  New Hope Uganda has 5 areas of vocational training: metal working, brick-laying, carpentry, auto mechanics, and weaving and tailoring. The mission of New Hope Vocational Institute is to train young men and women in vocational and entrepreneurial skills and to disciple them to become God-fearing and self-sufficient citizens of their communities and the nation of Uganda.  The purpose of the Morningstar Institute is to research the concept of offering vocational training to young men and women followed by the trainee becoming a microloan borrower to validate whether this model will lead young borrowers out of poverty before they are middle aged and traditionally able to access microloans. The opportunity with New Hope meets the Morningstar objectives perfectly, and gives me a chance to research the impact of microloans given to young men and women who have just finished their vocational training and are just starting out in life.  In fact, New Hope is the very place that Dr. Herskowitz was working when the idea of Morningstar was formed.

            Another area in which I have been asked to work with New Hope is the continued development, expansion, and greater self-sufficiency of their Enterprise Farm with specific interest in their maize (corn) mill. New Hope currently has a maize mill which is used to process maize into a usable form of flour that the locals cook into porridge or posho, which is like moist cornbread. This is one of the food staples in the area. The New Hope mill was established to serve two purposes; first, to serve New Hope’s own needs for flour milling the maize harvested from their own farm, and secondly, as an income generating business for New Hope in the community. The mill has been very successful but New Hope has larger plans for the business and the building in which it is located. The next stage is to expand the operation into a full scale business of buying and selling posho in the community. In addition, New Hope wants to stimulate agriculture in the area by supplying seed to the farmers in exchange for a commitment to sell New Hope the maize when it is harvested. This will give NHU the maize it needs in order to process and sell it in the area as well as stimulate the economy and give the local farmer the ability to plant more.  The farmers often struggle with the capital to start and it is New Hope’s idea that if they do a type of seed loan or finance the beginning stages for the farmer then more people will be able to participate in the program. With successful expansion of the current milling operation and careful implementation and management of their new plans, this can be a way to increase New Hope’s self-sufficiency as an organization as well as stimulate the economic development of the surrounding area. Morningstar’s mission is to also study how to develop self-sufficiency in local communities in the developing world.  This is a perfect opportunity for me to conceptualize the workings of economic development in the developing world in a very real way.  It is also an area in which I am very interested as well since it will use the training that I received at SNU in planning and managing businesses as well as developing business plans for new businesses.  (I was on the SNU Reynolds Cup Business Plan Competition team that made it to the finals in its first year of competition.)

 

            Morningstar is about empowering SNU students with the academic, analytical, and practical knowledge needed to become leaders in international development and poverty alleviation. 

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

In His Service,

 

Cody Lidster

Dear Friends,

 

Sorry this update is so long in coming. As I stated in my first update that the internet situation is tricky and not very easy for me to use often.

 

Oh my, how to explain the last 12 days!? First off, God is good!

 

From the time that I arrived until this Sunday there was a mission trip team here from Colorado Springs doing VBS and a weekend Youth Camp sort of event for New Hope and the surrounding community children. After a few days of just playing some random sports games and hanging out with a few people from the group, the leaders invited me and my roommate (Josh) to join them for the their evening and morning praise and worship and devotional times. This was a wonderful blessing to me as both the fellowship and the worship and devotionals made my transition to being here in Africa so much easier.

  

Since being here I have met the key people in charge of the Enterprise Farm, and the Maize Mill and have begun to grasp the potential for my time here. I have been working with Geoff Britton who is in charge of the New Hope Vocational Institute as well as the head and overseer of the maize mill and the enterprise farm. This last week we spent a couple of full days at the mill alone trying to put into place some measures to make the mill more efficient and simply instill a mindset of efficiency and increased production through just some simple steps like making sure everything is organized and making sure the facility is clean! There is lots of room for improvement. I have also spent some time on the Enterprise Farm looking at the way they have been cultivating and planting and the general practices they have been using and seeing how we can possibly improve those as well.

There are plenty of things to improve on at the farm for example some things as simple as using manure to fertilize to soil testing and proper crop rotation.

 

   Friday of this last week (June 26th) I was able to join the Colorado team as they went and did VBS in the local village of Kito. This was a really great experience and time to see some of the real conditions the people here live in everyday. Also, the next morning, Saturday, I returned with the team to the village and we began construction on a school building on the sight where we had the VBS. This was a new experience for me in that the building's frame was made from wooden logs, and then the walls we took reeds and tied them vertically and horizontally together with twine and then filled in between the reeds with mud! And the mud we had to dig a hole off to the side and then haul water from the bore hole down the hill about 150 yards with "jerry" cans. and then we got to mix the mud with our feet! This was all well and good as long as one watched out for sticks in the mud which potentially can and will poke you in the foot. This was truly a great day of work and I believe that what we accomplished that day will be a significant help to the school and church there in Kito. Even more, that evening we went back to the village and showed the 'Jesus' film to the people and that was also a really great experience for me.

  

Yesterday I took my very first boda-boda ride, which is simply a scooter taxi. This was a new and different experience for sure! But even better than that I was finally told which of the New Hope family groups I would be getting to work with while I am here and got to go and meet them and eat dinner with the family group for the first time! The children here live in one of the seven family groups and each family group has a family "father" and "mother" and usually about 15-25 kids. I will often be joining them for their evening devotions and helping them with their studies or teaching guitar or just sharing a meal with them, It should be a really great thing for both the family and me and I am pretty excited about it.

 

 My current endeavors is in the area of creating and implementing a business strategy for the maize mill and working with the workers to help increase their efficiency and productivity. Also I have been asked to undertake writing the policy for their University Students scholarship and tuition program. And even more than that I am also currently trying to gather in as much information as I can about the potential for microfinancing here and see the avenues for possible application. So God has definitely been faithful in making sure that I have things to do while I’m here!

   Thank you all again for your genuine and sincere prayers, I know that God hears and is watching over me and guiding me in all that I do.

 

~Grace, Peace, and Truth~

 

Making every step meaningful,

Cody Lidster

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; 
       Blessed be the name of the LORD.

 

Greetings from Uganda!

 

   It has been an interesting past two weeks! Last week was a tougher one; first it started with a trip to Kampala the capital city which included me getting sick and throwing up my lunch out the van window right onto the streets because we were stuck in stand still traffic! So I took the next day and mostly rested and recovered and then by Wednesday I was fine again, not sure what hit me, maybe just bad food. Then later that week the huller portion of the milling process at the maize mill started to break and we had to take it apart and try to get it fixed but that was delayed because the power was out for a couple of days. Then we finally did get it fixed towards the end of the week but before Saturday it had broken down again twice! Then when I returned on Monday morning I found that on Saturday the huller had almost literally exploded! one of the fan blades in the machine had broken off while it was running and ended up shooting through the side of the machine like a bullet! Luckily no one was hit by it and nobody got hurt! So this week we have been running without a fan on the huller and our productivity has been down slightly, but the power has been very sporadic and so we haven't been able to get the opportunity to fix it properly. Not to mention that it is a quite an ordeal to try and fix things here since most of the materials are of seriously poor quality. So even after welding something it has to be carefully inspected for weak spots because the welding material is so cheap that if there is even a small weak spot it will break very soon.

   A rather exciting and fun experience was this last weekend. We had a great celebration as it was New Hope's thanksgiving weekend! Overall it was a very nice break! Saturday I was able to just relax and read and play guitar and then play with some of the kids here. and Then Sunday was an awesome day of Thanksgiving! The service was crazy fun with a parade around the compound and then mass entering of the church meeting area and then a wicked sweet thanksgiving and praise service that lasted around 4 HOURS!!!! yeah so lunch at like 2:30 in the afternoon was also a very welcome experience. Then at 4 there was supposed to be a soccer game between the secondary school team and the New Hope staff... when the game started around 5 (oh good ole Uganda time) I was playing in position 7 (yeah I had no idea what that meant when they told me so they had to explain it to me) for the staff team. This was a lot of fun and seriously intense, a lot more intense than I had predicted it to be. When it was all said and done we had lost 3-4. but it was still a great game! Then I was able to go and just spend some time hanging out with my family group again. Awesome day. 

   So even with the setbacks in the machines at the mill, there has still been noticeable progress with the guys working there in their implementation of the system we are trying to get going. Which this is good since we are quickly approaching the 'busy season' for the mill since the maize is beginning to be ready for harvest. One of the really awesome things was this week we were able to purchase enough safety equipment for all of the guys at the mill to have their own dust mask, goggles, and ear protection! And it was also an encouraging sight when I walked in and they were all wearing theirs without me having to remind them. 

   This week I also spent some time working on the University Loan Policy and Friday was able to send it over to the Early Adulthood Department for them to look at and check for adjustments needed, so that is very exciting! Also i have been asked by the family father of Ebenezer (the family I'm connected to) to share devotionals on Monday nights. So this is also an awesome experience, just being able to share the word and the things of my heart with the children. :)

   The weather here is getting seriously hot. It is very much so becoming the dry season here now as until late this week it had been over a week since it had last rained.

   I hope this note finds you well. And that God is doing amazing things in your life. Please feel free to shoot me an email, I can't guarantee a speedy reply but I do appreciate them none the less. :)

 

 

Grace, Peace, and Truth,

Cody

Report #4  

 

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 9:27 AM, Cody Lidster <clidster@gmail.com> wrote: 

  

He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the              

Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

 

Dear Friends,

 

The Lord is good and Uganda is still hot! haha. As I mentioned in my last update that it is the dry season here and that means some serious heat.  But that's ok because it allows us to do some needed things that we couldn't do if it was the wet season (I'll explain later). And so, some exciting things have come and gone since my last update.

 

First I mentioned that I was going to be starting to bring devotions for the family group that I am connected to on Monday nights. This has been both a really nice opportunity and challenge! And this week I was fortunate enough to bring a devotional that focused on a very imminent topic. HARVEST!  Harvest is what I was referring to when I mentioned something that we couldn't do if it was the rainy season.

 

This week on Tuesday we had New Hope's harvest day! The entire New Hope family was involved in the picking of the maize fields at the Enterprise Farm. The day started at 8 in the morning, with probably more than 300 children and staff all walking down to the fields, and then before we knew it all the work was done! We harvested fewer than 18 acres and unfortunately the yield was not good at all so there was actually very little to pick. In fact it was so sad that in some places you would pass over a half dozen stalks before you found one with an ear of maize on it to pick! However, despite the disappointing yield of the maize it is nice to have it harvested and out of the field. There is a small section of maize that we will be harvesting later, however it is not very big, but hopefully it still yields much better than this last section. I will be adding photos from the harvest day to my picasa web album soon.

 

Early this last week I was able to go with Geoffrey (one of the workers from the mill) to the city of Luwero where we did some research on maize mills. It was a really good trip, containing several forms of transportation, and very informational and beneficial. We were able to visit 4 maize mills there and see how they are doing business and the kinds of equipment they are using and get info from them on the outputs and costs and things like that, so it was very good. So speaking of our interesting and various transportation methods, first we traveled by taxi, which was just an over-crowded mini-van type vehicle, then once in Luwero we took bicycle taxis to the first mill (yep just hop on the back of the bike), then to the second mill Geoffrey and I both rode on a boda boda (scooter, with driver making 3 of us total, that's a lot on a scooter), then we walked half way across town and then took bicycle taxis again back to the actual taxi park where we got into a bigger van that was also jam packed with people. All in all it was a good day. Things are really looking like we're going to be moving forward soon with this maize mill project, our next big thing is simply to find and purchase some more maize and then deal with the rest of the issues as they come.

 

I am finding myself rather encouraged by the progress we have made in the University Loan Policy that I have been writing. I mentioned in my last update that I had sent in the first Draft to Early Adulthood (EA) and so after that I met with the EA director and he pointed out some areas needing revision, so after I reworked those areas we looked over it again and with a few corrections decided it was ready to be taken to Management for approval. This is an exciting step because it is just that much closer to actually being implemented and actually being able to help young students have the opportunity to further their education on to the University level.

 

This week I was also able to finish making a promotional flyer/brochure for the maize mill. Uncle Jonnes had informed me in a meeting a couple of weeks ago that to do business here in Uganda it would be really helpful to have some sort of information that we could leave in the person's hand with whom we met. So we decided to make a brochure. This was definitely a bit of a task for me since I am not a graphic designer in the least! However, after some time and effort I was able to come up with a brochure that even our Ugandan brothers think is good. I will attach the brochure file so you can look at it if you desire.

 

Also during my meetings with the director of EA I agreed to on the responsibility to be a supervisor for an Investment Year (IY) student for a term from the end of August to mid November. This student will be working with me as an intern for the maize mill. I will be teaching/training in business principles through their presence in the maize mill project. I am very excited about this opportunity! It will be a very good and stretching experience both for the IY student and for me.

 

I am also finding encouragement in my research for micro-finance here at New Hope. It has been a struggle to find a place to start studying and researching for micro-finance opportunities here, however within the last two weeks I was able to take time and do some studying in the area of tailoring and talked with the tailoring students about some of the tasks one would face when starting their own small enterprise. Furthermore, I also discovered the existence of a pseudo-micro-finance program within the EA department with the IY students. At the beginning of their IY, the students are given a small amount of money, at this point in the form of a grant, in order to start their own business project. There is some potential in this area to further expand these already started 'IY Projects' into growing and producing micro-enterprises. I am looking forward to continuing my research in this area and finding ways to make this opportunity even more beneficial for the students.

 

Again I hope this note finds you well! And that you are praising God in all things.

 

Grace, Peace, and Truth,

 

Cody

                                               

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Cody Lidster <clidster@gmail.com> wrote:

 

For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.

 

Hello again,

 

To start, the last few weeks have been very busy and also full of really exciting events. Shortly after the harvest of our crops here at New Hope we realized that we would need to move forward with purchasing maize for the mill to continue to grow and increase its production. Another exciting aspect of the maize mill development has been that we have our new cleaning stations and are using them to speed up the process of cleaning the maize before it goes into storage. We have also increased our labor force by two extra workers who are primarily helping with the task of weighing, cleaning, drying, and packaging for storage the 20,000 kgs of maize that we have recently purchased. This is a really large task and has tested our ability to receive large shipments of maize all at once. It has been a learning process but has been worth it. We have also been running very seriously on the mill side of the operation as we are now having our own maize to mill plus we are seeing a huge increase in the number of customers who want their maize milled also, so things have been quite hectic at the mill lately. Also another development at the maize mill has been that we now have printed bags that are bearing our own logo (designed by yours truly) to package our finished product of maize flour in. This is a really exciting thing since the very first day we put flour in one of our new bags people have been very excited to see them and are always asking if they can buy one. After waiting for better than a week for the fan for our maize hulling machine to be fixed we finally decided to just go and fix it ourselves. So I got to do some more difficult welding here in Uganda (the welding rods are really cheap and make it rather difficult to make a quality weld). So now that the huller is back to working at full capacity the quality of our flour is much better than it was and all of the customers seem to be impressed. There is also lots of excitement at New Hope about the progress of the maize mill. I have attached a picture of me holding the first full new bag of maize flour.   

 

The students here have ended their summer term and are currently on a short holiday before the fall term starts here in about a week. So also the vocational school is also on holiday and in the vocational school the summer term is the one which denotes graduation for the upper level students. So we have had several students who have just finished their training in vocations. We also have selected five of them to continue on with New Hope for continued mentoring and business training (by me) leading ultimately to micro-finance loans. We have three students who have been trained in tailoring, and two students from the carpentry class. The tailors are going to receive micro-loans to cover the cost of a sewing machine for them and the carpenters will be receiving their loan to cover the cost of their carpentry tools. These graduates will then continue to receive contracts from New Hope for some time and while working on their contracts they will meet with me regularly both in a class setting where I will be teaching them basic business and accounting principles and also in a mentor setting where I will check up on their work and make sure they have the tools and supplies they need. I'm very excited about this development here at New Hope because it has great potential for making significant differences in the lives of the trainees and micro-loan borrowers.   

 

There has sadly been no news on the University Loan policy as to whether management has approved it or if the students going to university this year will be able to use it or not.

   

For the past couple of weeks I have been working on making a video which is highlighting my time here and how it relates to Morningstar and their mission in economic development and poverty alleviation. This has been a fun experience for me and also sort of a novelty for the local individuals who have been helping me and for those who are in the video itself. This video is going to travel back to the US with a team from North Dakota that is currently here now. It will then be edited by Chris Kyzer and then shown at SNU to highlight The Morningstar Institute.   

 

I also had the opportunity to go on an African Safari for two days this week. On Monday we left early in the morning and traveled to the North West region of Uganda where after arriving at the national park we took an afternoon cruise up the Nile River to just down river from Murchison Falls. This was a really cool boat ride as we saw tons of animals: hippos, crocodiles, elephants, water buffaloes, antelope type animals, warthogs, and numerous birds. Also seeing the falls from down river was also pretty neat. Then the next day we woke up early in the morning and began our safari drive through the national park/wildlife reserve. We saw some really awesome things, elephants, giraffes, and tons of antelopes and water buffaloes and birds. not to mention some really neat landscape. Then after leaving the park we headed back towards Murchison Falls by land and then stopped to have lunch above the falls and then spent a little time seeing the falls themselves, they were pretty amazing. All in all, the safari was an amazing experience for me and I really enjoyed it. I have also attached a photo of me on the Nile boat ride.   

 

Overall I have been staying really busy and it looks like things are going to continue to stay busy for me since soon (Sept. 7th) I will also begin to be working with the Investment Year intern that the Early Adulthood department sends my way. It's hard to believe that I have already been here for almost 3 months and in that same amount of time I'll be returning to the US. Until my next update I hope that you are well and that the Lord is blessing the work of your hands.

 

 Working towards the goal with God's

 Grace, Peace, and Truth,

 

 Cody

9/18/09

 

"I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power." Eph. 1:15-19

 

Dear Friends,

 

   It's almost hard for me to believe that I only have 2 and 1/2 more months here in Uganda.

 

   Work at the mill has been going forward very seriously these days. We were able to clean and dry all of the 20,000 kgs of maize that we purchased and have them neatly stored away now and have also been milling on them as steadily as possible. The attached picture is one of myself and some of the workers at the maize mill in front of some of our newly stored maize. However, our milling has been interrupted in these past couple of weeks with some frustrating break downs in the machine engines. Within the last two weeks I think that each machine (2 of them) has been taken completely apart at least three times! Not a good recipe for productivity. We have been able to keep up with the demand for posho from New Hope as well as continue milling maize for customers, however we have not been able to get enough milled to have surplus to market to the surrounding community. So this has been a little frustrating since I can see the potential we have we just haven't been able to reach it quite yet. However, on a really positive note, we found out this last week that we were going to be getting electricity at our mill site! and then even better the electric company (notorious for taking their time) came at the beginning of this week and put in the electric meter! Also we found out last week that we are going to have the money we were needing to purchase an electric huller and an electric mill which should help to increase productivity by as much as 8x more! Plus the new electric machines will be using 40 and 50 horse power electric motors which are much more powerful than the 10 horse power diesel engines we are using now and thus will be able to produce a much finer flour which is considered by the customer to be of higher quality. So this is very exciting news and development! Last week I traveled to Kampala and did price researching on the electric machines, motors, equipment etc. and then this week we placed an order to have our machines made and they should be ready by something like Thursday of this coming week! This is a GIANT step forward for the maize mill and thrilling for everyone around here! This week we also took a business trip up to the Masindi region which is North West of New

Hope to meet with a farmer who is going to be a major supplier for our maize in the future. The farmer is planning on growing 50 acres of maize each season which will produce around 100-120 tons of maize (ton = 1,000kgs). So this was a big meeting and praise the Lord it went really well, they were very nice in receiving us and the time we spent there was very nice, which this is important considering the very relational nature of the culture in Uganda. We are making some really big steps in Faith right now at the mill so continued prayer for God's blessing is appreciated.

 

   This week is the first week for the Maize Mill intern to be working with  me. The intern is a young man in the Investment Year program here at New Hope. I have been pretty eager to start working with him as I know it is going to both be a great learning experience for him as well as a helpful aspect for the mill. I have been teaching him some basic things about business in general and really using the real life opportunities at the mill as a platform for teaching. Also each day we take aside a little time to do some studying in marketing and simple accounting. He seems to really be catching on very quickly and already I can tell he is learning a lot from the experience. It has been interesting for me to actually be teaching him in a class setting as this is a new thing for me and also it has been really fun to be able to connect the real life things we are doing with the things we have been talking about and seeing in the books we are going through.

 

   There has been little development yet with the micro-financing for the vocational graduates as many of them thought they should enjoy the "holiday" time that the other students who are still in vocational training were having. However, we have scheduled that we will have our first meeting with them this coming Friday to work out some of the particulars of the arrangement and what it is going to look like in terms of what their loan does for them, how much it is going to cost them, how and when they are going to pay it back, etc. They all seem to be very excited about this opportunity that they are getting and even as I was talking with one of the young men today about having our first meeting next week when we finished without even saying any words he just leaned over and gave me the biggest hug. :) Encouraging.

 

   This last Saturday we held a "worship" night here at New Hope. My roommate (Josh) and I are both musically inclined and play guitar and like to sing and since we have been here there are several children who have been wanting to learn to play guitar and sing better so we have been doing lessons with them. Well we decided that we should have an evening when these ones who have been coming and practicing and learning worship songs could actually use these newly gained abilities to praise the Lord and bless others. So we organized a worship night and it was a wonderful experience.

 

It was really a great time of just worshiping and praising God and it was really awesome to see these young students so sincerely expressing their love for their God. This has been another great encouragement to me for my time here.

 

   Thank you all for remembering me in your prayers and thank you for your emails and sincere encouragements as they are a blessing to me.  May you know what is the hope to which He has called you.

 

Grace, Peace, and Truth,

Cody