Child and Youth Care grad helping 1,000s of HIV/AIDS-affected children

Jolly Nyeko loves children. For over three decades Nyeko-graduating from UVic with her PhD in child and youth care this month-has worked to provide programming for and inspiration to countless young people in her native Uganda. She gives regular talks to fellow mothers, leads fundraising efforts for primary education centres and, in 1995, founded Action for Children, a non-profit group that cares for more than 20,000 children and families vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and poverty across the country.

And still-after 30 years of faces, stories, successes and hope-Nyeko felt she could use a bit more training.

"I found myself working more and more on children's development issues and, even with a background in sociology and development studies, I needed to find some knowledge, some concepts, to make my skills work for children," she explains.

After looking at a handful of programs in other corners of the globe, Nyeko met Dr. Alan Pence, a professor in UVic's School of Child and Youth Care and the UNESCO Chair for Early Childhood Education, during an early childhood development summer school in Uganda in 1997. She kept in touch and, when a PhD program was added to the school in 2006, she began her studies under his supervision."Even in this first year I've felt the difference in our organization," says Nyeko, who successfully defended her thesis in October 2011 and has since found dozens of opportunities to apply her new skills. "I think faster, find solutions faster and I've been able to work quickly in discussions to find alternatives.

"Somebody asks a question and I know the answer right away; I know what impact this situation will truly have on a young person."
Nyeko's own childhood was wrought with poverty and a family, community and country rocked by the AIDS epidemic. Given her r&e#180;sum&e#180; and this personal experience, Nyeko originally meant to craft a dissertation about how AIDS affects children in poor communities, but her research turned up too much good information on childhood development itself to ignore.

"My background is not different from that of the children I work with," she says. "I visit these households and see a situation I used to live in myself, of great need and displacement.

"I stand before many children looking for role models and I say 'As much as you're growing up in need, you can make it with hard work and total commitment' and I feel confident to say this because I did it."

With four degrees under her belt, Nyeko is going to give the books a rest to pick up the pen. She plans to work on a combination of academic and experiential writing, continuing with her research interests to provide curriculum and how-to manuals for parents concerned with childhood development in Uganda. Of course, young people themselves will continue to take centre stage in this writing.

"I got into children's work by accident, working as a social worker with orphaned children, and then I discovered that my passion was also there. I keep thinking 'Yeah! This is where you belong'."