“My mother told me never to give up, be better, work harder. She was my greatest inspiration. She died when I was nine years old but her words motivate me every day.”
Although there is no “typical” day, six out of seven days per week Valence gets up around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. at his home in Lugazi and is on the road to his schools in Najja or Kitoola or Mukono soon after. The long drives carry him over some highway but mostly over rutted, dusty dirt roads until he arrives at his schools – purposefully placed “in the middle of nowhere”.
“We wanted to build schools in the villages where the children otherwise had no access to education.”
Valence’s cell phone is constantly attached to his ear. A concerned parent. Repairs for a broken borehole. An interview with a potential school secretary. He oversees much of the minutia involved in running three schools and educating about 1,200 students. The demands often prevent him from returning home until very late at night.
He is living a vision and carrying out a mission he has held in his heart since childhood. Valence, himself, was a “sponsored” child. Someone saw a spark in him and paid for an education he otherwise would not have had. That education changed his life and forged his future to provide education – aka “hope” – to children who would have no life outside the sugarcane plantations and deep impoverishment that surround them.
“A leader is a giver of hope,” Valence once said.
Valence Rutaisire is such a leader. (He is married to Doreen Kusaasire Rutaisire for 15 years. Together they have four children aged 2, 6, 12 and 14. He graduated from Makerere University, Kampala with a degree in Developmental Studies.)