Campaigner with 20 years’ work in Africa gives talk as local role model
GIRLS met a long-time charity worker in Africa as part of a series of talks by Macclesfield role models.
Rhona Marshall MBE has for more than 20 years supported Christian Relief Uganda (CRU), a charity established in 1996 to raise funds for and support the work of Maria Maw MBE.
Maria, who attended a church in Macclesfield, was working with destitute children in a small underprivileged community in the Kamuli District of Busoga and established a Ugandan Non-Government Organisation (NGO) called Maria’s Care.
Rhona, who lives in Tytherington, spoke to students at King’s School’s Girls’ Division about ‘a life worth living’ as one of the role models who is attending school for a series of talks.
The veteran campaigner, who is now aged 68 and has raised millions of pounds for Christian Relief Uganda, recalled how she got involved after being invited by Maria Maw to travel to Uganda to see an African orphanage in 1996.
She told the students: “You mustn’t worry about what others are doing, you must take the lead and if your cause is right, others will follow.
“I want to empower you to take control and encourage you to act rather than just talk about it, now and throughout the rest of your lives.
“I wasn’t an accountant, I wasn’t a fundraiser, but I was a chatterbox and a really good organiser and I thought if I start perhaps others will help and sure enough they did and they have been helping over the last two decades and more.
“In that time the charity, with the help of Maria Maw MBE, who sadly passed away in 2013, has helped many hundreds of young Africans overcome gruelling childhoods blighted by poverty, disease and the after effects of Uganda’s tyrant regimes.
She said: “We are not in a city, we are working with communities who live in mud huts and have no running water, little access to education, health care and all the necessities we take for granted and what makes me most proud is that so many have developed into wonderfully responsible young people with good jobs who are now helping to transform Uganda.”
Principal of King’s Girls’ Division, Helen Broadley, said: “I don’t think it’s inappropriate to talk of Rhona as Macclesfield’s modern day saint and it was a privilege for all of us, staff and girls alike, to listen to her life story.”
Rhona is still working with the charity and takes parties of volunteers to Uganda to sponsor her mission. To get involved contact her through her email address rhona_cru@talktalk.net.
The next party to travel to Uganda will leave in early July.