Changemakers
The gift of goats
Community builder lays down a path to education for Ugandan children.
Patience Spinoza Okuku feels that his life in Canada has its roots in the generosity of strangers. After growing up in Northern Uganda, Patience received the Donald Wehrung International Student Award to attend UBC Okanagan. “Getting that scholarship made me feel that I owed the world.” Throughout his time as a student, he says, “I wanted to remember the communities that had raised me.”
Those communities live in a region grappling with civil war and its enduring effects. Patience recalls experiencing Uganda’s conflict as a young child: At times, when the fighting came close, his family was told to flee their house because it was safer to sleep outdoors. “I’ve slept in the bush,” Patience says. “For me, looking back, that’s where I really come from. That’s my story.” Amid the relative ease of daily life in Canada, he says, “it’s very easy for someone to forget where they’re coming from.”
Patience honours his home through The Spinoza Foundation, a volunteer-run organization he founded as a UBCO student to support the people of Northern Uganda. By visiting villages and interviewing communities about their needs and goals, Patience learned that young people living with HIV face an intersectional web of challenges, with some families keeping children with HIV home from school, even as their siblings attend, due to stigma and poverty.
These conversations formed the basis of The Spinoza Foundation’s mission. Patience decided to offer support in two ways: scholarships for children living with HIV, and donations of goats to local families. Goats, Patience explains, are the ideal livestock for families in the area because they are uniquely resilient to disease and climate—and they multiply quickly. A donation of one goat (costing a donor about $50) transforms into 10 goats before long. These offspring, in turn, support the foundation’s mission to sustain education, as families can sell their goats to pay for school fees.
As a completely volunteer-run organization, the foundation makes the most of every dollar donated. But while he believes in maximizing impact, Patience says that what truly sets the foundation apart is its belief in working with the community not as saviours but as peers: “We emphasize their agency in this process.”
After graduating from UBCO, Patience went on to a Master of Philosophy degree in development studies at Cambridge University, and describes building community as both his passion and his career. This year, he aims to donate 1,000 goats through The Spinoza Foundation—a goal he describes as simultaneously simple and audacious. “It’s not like we’ve solved all the problems in this world,” he says. “But we have made the lives of a few hundred people better.”
