A family outing at Mpanga National Forest, where Cari and the children made a music video for an upcoming project that features LoL’s talented dancers, singers, and songwriters.
Alumna Cari Matejka, ’03, ’04, wants every child she meets to have a bright future, whether they’re from the city of Olean or a small African village. That’s why Matejka became a teacher and also why she founded a nonprofit in Uganda.
Matejka, CEO of Literacy of Love (LoL) and an Olean middle school teacher, began her journey to help educate children in economically depressed regions around the world through partnerships with the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) program at St. Bonaventure.
For two years, Matejka connected her middle school students to students in the Bahamas through the School of Business’ SIFE program (now known as Enactus). Matejka traveled twice with the SIFE group to the Bahamas to work with students and eventually learned about Embrace It Africa, another outreach mission at the university. In 2012, Matejka visited and taught at the Ugandan village where Embrace It Africa volunteers spearheaded their work.
By 2016, the East African children had captured Matejka’s heart and she began to build her own nonprofit organization, Literacy of Love. The organization’s mission is to provide a home and support for children so they can develop a sense of belonging and to ensure an education to children who would otherwise not have an opportunity to attend school.
It’s also very important that the children be purposely raised with the integrity of their culture, Matejka said. The children’s home provides basic care, but more importantly, it unites the children through a common opportunity for an education.
“This is not a place to adopt children, but to grow children into adults who can change their own community. Valuing, reinforcing and intentionally using common cultural practices and not insisting on foreign ways gives the program authenticity,” she said.
These children come from poverty that is unknown to those in rural Western New York. The homes in Mpigi are typically made from mud with one large room and no indoor plumbing. Water is gathered daily from a communal source. Many children arrive at the LoL home with little or no education, malnutrition, disease, and disabilities. Having a steady home for these children gives them a stable core, a sense of family.
Currently, LoL is home to 50 sponsored children. Another two to 10 children in desperate need remain on a waiting list. Matejka explained that these children are typically family members of children already at the home or members of the community who hear about their work via word of mouth.
Most of the children’s families are so poor that they cannot provide the most basic needs, Matejka said.
“LoL provides structure, counseling, and guidance for the children so that they can see hope for their future,” she said.
The pandemic hit Uganda as hard, if not harder, than in the United States. During the worst of the pandemic, LoL provided not only a home and food to its children, but also food and medical assistance to many of the children’s families. While Matejka was in Uganda in December 2021, a widowed mother was invited to spend the holiday with her two children who live at the home. The woman told her children and Matejka that the home was “paradise” – where her children have a safe home to live, can attend school, have clean clothes to wear and food to eat every day.
Ssema is Literacy of Love’s first graduate. He is the owner of a salon in the village and plays soccer for a local team.
With a strong foundation formed with the school, the future mission, Matejka said, “is to become an independent community in which graduates of the program help to start businesses, mentor younger students and help change the future for these children and their families.”
Students who started in the program in elementary school are now graduating college and trade schools. A young man named David has graduated medical school and is a doctor. Another, Jude, completed college to become a medical lab technician. Both will be part of the medical center that Matejka plans to build this summer.
Many children at the home are taught trades such as welding, barbering, and tailoring. Several students are already realizing their goals with small businesses, such as a pig farm, a welding shop, operating a tourism business and a tailor shop. With these grown children now becoming productive citizens of Uganda, Matejka feels sustainability is in sight: Several of these business owners are now taking LoL’s older children as apprentices and teaching them their trade.
For Matejka, hope for a future for these once destitute children is becoming a reality.
“Sometimes I feel I am torn between two worlds, but I work every day to keep the mission growing and moving forward,” she said.
She is appreciative of her Bonaventure ties and the inspiration that Embrace It Africa ignited. Three of her core supporters are alumni and one is a former Bonaventure faculty member.
She says Franciscan values shine through the people who help her carry out LoL’s mission to break the cycle of generational poverty while providing a family that gives these children hope.
“The needs are endless, but the possibilities are endless, too,” Matejka said.
To learn more about the LoL organization, visit:
Website: www.literacyoflove.org
Facebook: @literacyoflove
Instagram: @literacyoflove
Email: carimatejka1@gmail.com
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