LUOCOME


LUOCOME Odundo's Loud Thoughts MEETUP CALENDER PROJECTS JALUO.COM ACHOLI ANYWAA-Ethiopia ANYWAA-Sudan	Let us Meetup and make a difference Because ofyour education standard and your exposure to the world, you are already a leader by default in the community where you come from. Much is expected of you. Many of you already know this, and have risen to the challenge. Some have initiated projects to enhance the life in the community. Others have sponsored your siblings to higher learning. Still, others have also worked tirelessly giving their time and money to better your community. Any good deed you have done for your community or family that brightens their survival prospects is very commendable and I urge you to put your two hands together and give yourself a few rounds of applause; indeed your are a progressive Luo leader and you deserve the praise! Those who have not done anything yet, I am sure you have been thinking about it. Now is a great time to get involved. The main philosophy behind Luo Community Everywhere (LUOCOME) is to encourage every Luo community member to be involved in the welfare of the particular community where one originates from, especially the education, health, and economic development aspect of it. More specifically, every member must be affiliated with a Community Block Organization (CBO) at the village level. Each member is expected singly or with others from the same area to play a patronage role in setting up the CBO, sourcing for funds and/or materials to fulfill those needs, and ensuring that competence and trustworthiness prevails in the administration and implementation of the projects by the CBO. For those who believe in Nyasaye like myself, I am sure you know that Obong’o Nyakalaga does not want you to live a life of misery. He wants you to have a happy fulfilled life. If your wish is to be rich, He will let you be! Some of you have already been granted that wish too. Good for you ! However, our communities are in crisis, mainly created by the politics, war and health turmoils we have experienced over the last 40+ years. Please take a moment and think about what your community has been through over these years. Whether you are a Luo from Sudan, Congo, Uganda, Tanzania or Kenya, you have all gone through some major trauma. Do you feel the pain of the orphans, the widows and the widowers in your village? Do you get the feeling that you are an orphan too? That weare all orphans? Well we can’t just feel miserable andhelpless for ever! We must take some drastic measures to get us out of our predicament. We already agreed that we are leaders, right? So, LUOCOME wants you to take ownership of your village, literally. Usingyour CBO (or your business), you will create well paying jobs in your village. You will do things like build, stock and staff a village health center so that the people from your village do not have to walk long distances when they have a medical emergency. You willbuild, stock and staff a village analog and digital library to enhance the knowledge in your village. These are but ideas. Obviously, you will make a long list of the needs of your village and prioritize accordingly. What LUOCOME will assist you with at the Meetup are the following: · Help you with locating your village mates wherever they may be in the world and hook you up. Obviously, this will only apply to those who want to be located and also want to participate in your village development. · Avail sources of funding from every possible place in the world. Anyone who comes across funds we can tap into please forward the information to us and we will make it immediately available to all Meetup venues. · Volunteer experts will look through your business plan and community development ideas and guide you accordingly. All of you are experts at something. Please share your knowledge generously. · Volunteer experts will also assist with grant writing. Please take the plunge and give your community an opportunity to be normal again. Luocome to the Meetup venue nearest to you. Start one in your area if none exists yet. Your community is in a crisis and needs you now more than it has ever needed you. Let’s go and do it! LUOCOME is not just all business and no fun. Yes, we want to share knowledge, and write grants, and get scholarships, and do volunteer work and all that. But we also want to have fun! We want to share food, music, stories,have our unmarried Luo men and women get to meet, date and even marry. We want to enjoy all these other aspects of life that make us uniquely Luo. Every Meetup chapter will just do their thing in their style, depending on the desires of the members. Once every year, we shall have one big conference to gauge our progress, hear our people present papers on different topics concerning us, have a good time, and chart an improved vision for our community for the coming years. In June 2007, our conference will be in Guthrie, Oklahoma. I Luocome many of you there. Let me end by answering a question that someone asked me. Who owns LUOCOME? The answer is you do. If you believe that you are a Luo, or friend of the Luo, and if you are involved or want to be involved in improving the life conditions of the Luo people, I want to take this opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart for caring so much about us to be involved. Nyasaye ogwedhi omin. ! Odundo jaKarateng’. odundo@jaluo.com ===================================================== "When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country. But it, too, seemed immovable. As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it. And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family. From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world." Inscribed on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in Westminster Abby (1100 A.D.) Joluo Dot Com

Let us Meetup and make a difference

Because ofyour education standard and your exposure to the world, you are already a leader by default in the community where you come from. Much is expected of you. Many of you already know this, and have risen to the challenge. Some have initiated projects to enhance the life in the community. Others have sponsored your siblings to higher learning. Still, others have also worked tirelessly giving their time and money to better your community. Any good deed you have done for your community or family that brightens their survival prospects is very commendable and I urge you to put your two hands together and give yourself a few rounds of applause; indeed your are a progressive Luo leader and you deserve the praise! Those who have not done anything yet, I am sure you have been thinking about it. Now is a great time to get involved.

The main philosophy behind Luo Community Everywhere (LUOCOME) is to encourage every Luo community member to be involved in the welfare of the particular community where one originates from, especially the education, health, and economic development aspect of it. More specifically, every member must be affiliated with a Community Block Organization (CBO) at the village level. Each member is expected singly or with others from the same area to play a patronage role in setting up the CBO, sourcing for funds and/or materials to fulfill those needs, and ensuring that competence and trustworthiness prevails in the administration and implementation of the projects by the CBO.

For those who believe in Nyasaye like myself, I am sure you know that Obong’o Nyakalaga does not want you to live a life of misery. He wants you to have a happy fulfilled life. If your wish is to be rich, He will let you be! Some of you have already been granted that wish too. Good for you !

However, our communities are in crisis, mainly created by the politics, war and health turmoils we have experienced over the last 40+ years. Please take a moment and think about what your community has been through over these years. Whether you are a Luo from Sudan, Congo, Uganda, Tanzania or Kenya, you have all gone through some major trauma. Do you feel the pain of the orphans, the widows and the widowers in your village? Do you get the feeling that you are an orphan too? That weare all orphans? Well we can’t just feel miserable andhelpless for ever! We must take some drastic measures to get us out of our predicament. We already agreed that we are leaders, right?

So, LUOCOME wants you to take ownership of your village, literally. Usingyour CBO (or your business), you will create well paying jobs in your village. You will do things like build, stock and staff a village health center so that the people from your village do not have to walk long distances when they have a medical emergency. You willbuild, stock and staff a village analog and digital library to enhance the knowledge in your village. These are but ideas. Obviously, you will make a long list of the needs of your village and prioritize accordingly.

What LUOCOME will assist you with at the Meetup are the following:

· Help you with locating your village mates wherever they may be in the world and hook you up. Obviously, this will only apply to those who want to be located and also want to participate in your village development.

· Avail sources of funding from every possible place in the world. Anyone who comes across funds we can tap into please forward the information to us and we will make it immediately available to all Meetup venues.

· Volunteer experts will look through your business plan and community development ideas and guide you accordingly. All of you are experts at something. Please share your knowledge generously.

· Volunteer experts will also assist with grant writing.

Please take the plunge and give your community an opportunity to be normal again. Luocome to the Meetup venue nearest to you. Start one in your area if none exists yet. Your community is in a crisis and needs you now more than it has ever needed you. Let’s go and do it!

LUOCOME is not just all business and no fun. Yes, we want to share knowledge, and write grants, and get scholarships, and do volunteer work and all that. But we also want to have fun! We want to share food, music, stories,have our unmarried Luo men and women get to meet, date and even marry. We want to enjoy all these other aspects of life that make us uniquely Luo. Every Meetup chapter will just do their thing in their style, depending on the desires of the members.

Once every year, we shall have one big conference to gauge our progress, hear our people present papers on different topics concerning us, have a good time, and chart an improved vision for our community for the coming years. In June 2007, our conference will be in Guthrie, Oklahoma. I Luocome many of you there.

Let me end by answering a question that someone asked me. Who owns LUOCOME? The answer is you do. If you believe that you are a Luo, or friend of the Luo, and if you are involved or want to be involved in improving the life conditions of the Luo people, I want to take this opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart for caring so much about us to be involved. Nyasaye ogwedhi omin. !

Odundo jaKarateng’.
odundo@jaluo.com