'Roving reporter' returning to Uganda

Overseas mission work is in Shelley Sullivan's genes.

It's her father, Pastor Graeme Baucke, who gets the credit for sowing the seed when she was a child, and the desire to help others far less advantaged than any New Zealander remains as strong now as ever.

The Kaitaia woman will soon be packing her bags for a third trip to Uganda, with a first visit to Rwanda along the way, where she will make use of new skills and see what has become of the aid the Far North has provided to one community in the form of a house for orphan children.

She is particularly looking forward to visiting Kaitaia House at Uganda's Laminadera Children's Village Gulu, as part of the Watoto Children's Village house project, catering for orphans and "vulnerable" children, many of whom were child soldiers. Each "family" is cared for by a widow.

The house was built with $46,000 raised in Kaitaia (by the Sisterhood Kaitaia Charitable Trust), in the same village as one of the schools she will be teaching at, and she's keen to see what progress had been made.

"It is an opportunity to come back and report to the community. I'm like a roving reporter checking up on our investment," she said.

That investment included teaching local women to sew when Shelley first ventured to Uganda. They were now manufacturing dolls (like the one she is pictured holding), she said, which the Watoto Children's Choir was selling as it travelled the world.

Meanwhile, this three-week trip, beginning on April 11, will be her first after completing three years of teacher training, which she will be putting to good use, teaching English to Ugandan teachers.

"It's quite a scary task but I'm looking forward to it very much," she said.

She will be travelling with the organisation Hope Global, the only New Zealander in a party comprising teachers, trauma counsellors and paediatricians. It is all self-funded, Shelley having saved her share of the cost, but she would be very grateful for any contributions of resources ("basic stuff - card, paper") that she could take with her for the schools she will visit.

And while a great deal of time, effort and expense was involved in this form of mission work, Shelley said the pleasure was all hers.

"I feel that it's a calling," she said.

"When I am there I feel I am in the right place at the right time. The people over there have been through so much trauma, yet they are still so happy. I come back here to Kaitaia and I am so grateful for what we have, and I try to teach that to the children here.

"If I can share my experiences with others, maybe it will open up the world to them, and hopefully it adds to me as a person."

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The Watoto Children's Choir will perform in Kaitaia, for the third time, on July 16, while three women, one of whom runs a home for disabled children in Uganda, will speak at the Virtue Church in Kaitaia on Sunday, March 30, all welcome.