The Union Building Ballroom transformed on Sunday from a lecture hall to the site of an African safari.
"African Adventure: Imagine Uganda" offered children from the Greencastle community the opportunity to see Uganda from the eyes of Ugandan children their own age. The event, which took place as a part of Social Promise, was underwritten by Beta Theta Pi fraternity, making it free to the Greencastle community.
Sharon Crary, president of Social Promise and professor of chemistry and biochemistry, founded Social Promise in 2011. Through her 2000 work in Uganda with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Crary was exposed to needy children in the St. Jude Children's Home in Northern Uganda and Lacor Hospital in Gulu.
"When she came home, she couldn't forget," Laura Paul, vice president of Social Promise, said.
Though Crary has been helping raise money for the St. Jude Children's Home and Lacor Hospital since 2001, Social Promise wasn't her means of spreading awareness yet.
"I was deathly afraid of starting a non-profit," Crary said.
Finally, eleven years after her initial visit to Uganda, Crary was able to incorporate Social Promise as a non-profit, helping to raise money and awareness for these two institutions.
The "African Adventure" event was created through the joint efforts of Crary and Sarah McGee, Crary's sister-in-law and treasurer of Social Promise.
"Uganda's always been a part of our children's lives," McGee said. "Our kids really inspired us to realize that even at a young age they can understand that people from other parts of the world live differently than we do."
"My younger son has a hidden kindness where he gives money to Social Promise all the time," Crary said. "I don't think that's because he's just genetically like that, I think it's because he's been raised to think, 'Oh, we have to help the kids there, it's a no brainer.'"
During the event, the kids start out at the first station, where they are provided with a suitcase and a passport.
"Then, they report to their flight to Uganda," Paul said.
Many other stations were spread throughout the room. One taught children how to wrap a baby around their back as mothers, and even older siblings, in Uganda would do. Another station offered children the opportunity to create toys for themselves using only items that Americans might consider trash such as Popsicle sticks and used water bottles.
"When I was there a few years ago with Sharon [Crary], we saw some girls throwing what literally seemed to be a piece of cloth with some pebbles or beads in it, playing monkey in the middle," Paul said. "Those kids are so tough and so self-reliant and so creative and inventive and they work with what they've got. They're just survivors."
The "African Adventure" event was first born in 2012 in New York, where McGee lives. They held it again in New York earlier this year and hope to take the program to Indianapolis and Minnesota sometime in 2014.
Though Social Promise does accept donations at these event, they are all free of charge to those attending.
"We want to raise money for our partners [in Uganda]," Crary said, "but we also really want to inspire people here to help make a change."
