For more than 5 years, Snake River Music Gardens has worked with Ugandans to advance Africa's food forest movement and care for orphans.

In 2021, Lindianne and Arthur Sappington started a music studio to support the work of Waiswa John Billy, orphanage director, and Joseph Mulopi, agriculturist, two brothers raising 35 orphans, operating His Grace Children's Home, and planning Boma Food Forest. Boma is an ancient word meaning "home that provides food and fuel from diverse trees."

Now that the 10 acre Boma Food Forest has been purchased (thanks to generous donors), the needs of this project have gone beyond what one music studio and a small number of donors can provide. Hence our multi-university multi-class project appeal. Donors already include members of Princeton's Classes of '68, '73, '74, '75, '76, '02, '05, '09, and UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources 1978.

We at Snake River Music Gardens, with our decades of service on the land, are part of Earth's food forest movement. We are merely passing on to these youth what we received from our families: food, shelter and education until we stood on our own feet. We seek support, not just for 35 orphans, but to enact the food forest formula at our flagship orphanage, and go on food-foresting property after property. Interestingly, we are enacting the food forest formula here in the high desert of rural Eastern Oregon; the tree and plant species are different, the principles are the same.

How our partnership works: Youth in Act - Uganda Director Waiswa John Billy provides concise formula budgets and willing hands to do the work. We provide capital for tools, materials, seeds, seedlings, tree nursery supplies. Capital for qualified land purchases. Capital to build rainwater harvesting structures on the land: swales, ponds, ferrocement cisterns. Capital to dig a well if needed. Supplies for composting structures. Project costs are very reasonable. In 5 years, your support will have settled an agricultural community in self-reliance forever. You will have contributed to a global wave of food forest gardens. Your family will have a common bond with the community you settle. Youth will be able to travel to Africa, live and work in a healthy, known community, visit Uganda's vibrant universities, and have the adventure of their lives.

The example of our food forests will show young people how to remain in their nation and build good lives in their regional culture, rather than having to set out across the globe to earn a living. One of our Ugandan correspondents, Simon Tumwijukye, is in Dubai now sending money home to his siblings, and we want to get Simon on his land so he may support his family in the food forest economy.

Snake River Music Gardens provides vetting services. We qualify young people who live with purpose and meaning, and who have chosen a piece of land. In an era when charitable donors expect scams from Africans, Snake River Music Gardens has vetted a group of Ugandans who are unfailingly dedicated, truthful, ethical, and diligent. Meet our Ugandan correspondents, read their Profiles in Self-Reliance (on this website), learn their stories, thrill to their documented progress towards real "boots-on-the-ground" abundance. Visit our Youth in Act - Uganda page, or click on our video, below, and get to know the team and orphans.

Your earmarked donation goes 100% to the project (minus wire transfer fees). We do not retain a percentage for our services.