Rose Egolet is the co-founder and CEO of 4 Generating Real Opportunities for Women (4GROW), a Canadian charity that partners with Ugandan rural grassroots organizations across several districts (Ngora, Bukedea, and Kumi) in the subregion of Teso.
Rose is involved in 4GROW’s overall management and leadership. She strives to implement policies and practices consistent with 4GROW’s mission to empower vulnerable women and their families. She is a firm believer of providing underprivileged rural communities with access to opportunities: training of women leaders and governance, and which has created sustainable livelihoods that support poverty reduction.
Rose has been an educator for the last 31 years in both Canada and several African countries. She volunteered to created school and community partnerships that raised awareness, and provided opportunities for students from marginalized communities to engage in travel abroad to conferences, and also to contribute to community development work among other youth and neighborhood families.
Her compassion, enthusiasm and desire to advocate for underserved communities is reflected in 4GROWs achievement of successfully educating and training rural women groups. These beneficiaries have developed leadership skills that have allowed them to mobilize self-governed clusters. Through these organizations they were able to run group village saving operations and create agribusiness opportunities that have improved household incomes, individual health and food security.
Rose is an optimist at heart and strongly believes that a world free from disparities is attainable. Through her work at 4GROW she aspires to one day make this vision a reality.
4GROW Board Chair Janice Orr is a wife, mother and grandmother who lives in the beautiful countryside west of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
As a child, Janice felt an affinity for nature, animals, art and reading. Coming to faith in Jesus Christ at age nineteen profoundly shaped her adult life.
After a seventeen year career as a stay-at-home Mom, in 1988 Janice became an RPN, working on the Medical floor in a local hospital until she retired from nursing in 1996. From home she continued to support her husband’s farm enterprise by processing and marketing eggs and honey.
In 1996 Janice became personally involved in protecting unborn children, serving as volunteer director at Birthright, an emergency pregnancy service. For thirteen years she counselled and supported girls and women distressed by unplanned pregnancies, offering them alternatives to abortion.
Fulfilling a longstanding desire to work with a Christian mission, from 2004-2011 Janice worked as a receptionist at the Canadian headquarters of World Vision, a renowned emergency relief and development organization. She learned about humanitarian responses to crises, whether caused by natural disasters, poverty, injustice or conflict.
In 2013 Janice’s worldview was dramatically enlarged on a trip to Uganda. There she witnessed firsthand the plight of widowed and abandoned women and children. The issue became very personal in the light of her relationship with the Lord who loves them as deeply as He cares for her.
Back home in Canada, Janice co-founded 4 Generating Real Opportunities for Women (4GROW) to offer adequate and consistent support to marginalized people like those she had met in Uganda.
Janice believes that a key to personal growth and satisfaction is to participate in ventures that empower poor and vulnerable people to succeed. She cheerfully invites others to join her in the adventure.
Monette Smith - In 2015 I was introduced to the plight of women and children in rural Uganda. These women and children have few options if they don’t have the education or resources and/or a male head of the household. I saw how the programs that 4GROW had initiated had such a life changing effect on the women and their families. In 2015, I became treasurer and in 2017 a Board member as well.
I have over 25 years experience in revenue with a provincial Board. I have visited the 4GROW women projects in Uganda, twice and have witnessed the changes our programs have had in their communities. With the resources we give, they work hard to maximize the outcomes beyond expectation. This determination and perseverance on their part gives me the desire and compassion not to let my ladies down. They want what we all want as mothers; opportunities and choices to alter their circumstances and their children’s future. Their success is my goal.
4GROW Board member, Shirley Hu is a veteran educator who has spent many years teaching and supporting linguistically diverse students in Ontario public school boards. Teaching English as a second language has been an ongoing focus throughout her career. She has taught various groups, from convention refugees to professional immigrant adults.
Ms. Hu has been the LEAP (Literacy Enrichment Academic Program) Assessment and Resource Teacher with the ESL/ELD Department of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), one of the largest district school boards in North America from 2014-2021. She has coordinated LEAP admissions, provided staff development programs and ongoing support to elementary and secondary LEAP teachers. She has also collaborated in several TDSB and Ontario Ministry of Education writing teams that developed assessment materials for English language learners (ELLs) and teaching resources for ELLs with limited prior schooling. In addition, Ms. Hu has been an Instructional Curriculum Leader for the TDSB from 2010-2014, consulting with schools on issues of curriculum, teaching methodology and best practices to support elementary and secondary school-aged English language learners.
Excited and passionate about education, Ms. Hu has facilitated many professional development sessions and webinars for educators and has delivered talks at education conferences. She has also taught the ESL qualification courses at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and was part of the writing team that developed the OISE Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) self-paced online course. Ms. Hu has led numerous initiatives in identity text pedagogy for both elementary and secondary ELLs and is the co-author of the article, Identity Texts and Academic Achievement: Connecting the Dots in Multilingual School Contexts.
In the summer of 2019. Ms. Hu visited Uganda for three weeks and witnessed the wonderful work 4GROW was doing for widowed and abandoned women and children. She volunteered to create a website for the organization and finally in September 2019 www.4grow.org was launched. The following year, Ms. Hu joined 4GROW as a Board member.