Meet the man behind Save-a-buddy

By Justin Emedot, :: 14-09-2011

While a student, he thought of an idea that would have students with same values come together and share knowledge and ideas.
This gave birth to a fundraising initiative, Save-a-Buddy, and a debate club among others. They have raised over Sh30m in about two years, and represented UCU and Uganda in many international debate tournaments in Africa.
Perez Onyait Odeke, 24, was born on March 26, 1987 at the foot of Tororo Rock, at St Anthony’s Hospital. He is an Etesot from Soroti, but has neither been to Soroti nor speaks Ateso.
This is because his father migrated from Soroti years ago to Kayoro village, formerly in Tororo, but now Busia district. He speaks mainly English, some Luganda as well as Luo languages like Japadhola, Langi and Acholi.
He is the last-born of ten children of the late Thomas Polycarp Okware, and Catherine Okware.
Perez is a, poet, blogger, debater and a debate trainer, a budding entrepreneur and an activist. He is currently the UCU financial aid assistant. He has an interesting outlook on life.
”Because what is, is, and if it’s not then there is nothing you can do about it. But you can always do something about what isn’t,” the lawyer explains.
His first day at school is where his memory starts. It’s as if his life started playing right as he dressed up for school.
“I remembers putting on an aqua green T-shirt, I had a little bit of a belly, shorts, new shoes and clutching a well-crafted basket bag,” he says.
But he was disappointed when he reached class and found it full of babies, all crying and whining the whole time. This was at Kampala City Nursery.
After a short while, he had to be taken to middle class where he felt his peers were, but was brought back to baby class after he got used to the school system. Right after middle, he skipped top class and went to P1 at Joy Centre for Education, the primary section of his nursery school.
It was during that period that he got a foundation for education that transformed his life. He changed from school to school. First to a police children’s school in P3, then Nabumali, then Kasese Primary School and finally St Ann’s Preparatory School in Kabowa where he completed his P7.
He then joined O-level at St Peters College Tororo, and Busoga College Mwiri, for A-level before joining UCU for Bachelor of Laws in January 2007. Though he finished among the top in his class, he chose not to do the bar course, but is now pursuing a postgraduate diploma in revenue and tax management.
His shifting from school to school wasn’t because he was a troublesome child who always got expelled, but because his family always moved. His father, a civil servant who worked with the Ministry of Water and Development, was always transferred from place to place.
Soon after his father retired and went to live in the village, Perez had to go and live with his brother who was an auditor in Kasese, since he couldn’t go and study in the village. But there was rebel activity in Kasese, and when it became too much they came to Kampala.
This tour around schools only made him resent the Ugandan education system. He has a belief that going to school was a waste of his time. This is because he achieved mental liberation from outside school, which would have been his purpose of going to school.
“I never got creative because I was never asked what I wanted, but what they wanted to teach me. Though I studied law, I would have rather focused more on the arts,” Perez explains.
This is because he has a very deep appreciation for the arts. With it he wants to do something related to branding, marketing and advertising where he can express himself artistically.
While at school, he loved standing up on issues like teachers and bullying among students. This later saw him hold responsibilities.
At 14 he became the assistant head-prefect of St Peters College, Tororo in 2001/02. It was a challenge to hold such a duty in a school where students practised martial arts as a tradition and strikes were the order of the day. But he is glad that during his tenure, they had no strike, only a demonstration, which he led. It so happened that students had a pressing problem, but instead of striking, he talked them into a demonstration. They went to the fine art department and got manila paper and clearly wrote down their grievances and demanded to meet the district education officer.
The DEO’s appearance, and a special meal of beef out of the blue, made the students calm down.
At A-level he didn’t participate in any leadership roles, because he used the time to reflect and redefine his life and how he wanted it to be.
During that time, he thought of this idea of people with same values coming together to interact and share ideas. At that time Odeke called it “the Love Walkers Company”, because he believed that if people walk in love, then the love would motivate them to do the right thing and end with a network of people doing good things. But executing it was hard then.
When he came to UCU, he saw it as the right place to execute his vision. This couldn’t happen in his first year because he was getting used to the place.
“In my first attempt at creating an NGO, we even came up with a name, Youth Focus African, but it didn’t kick off because the students I was working with weren’t interested. At the end the idea died,” he recalls.
But he thought harder and came up with what is now known as Platform Revolution. This is further divided into four sections.
Plat-Revo, as it is known, started with Save-A-Buddy.
“This helps students in need. The idea was that if many people come up and donated something small, then in the end, it would amount to something big and there would be no use of seeking help from corporate companies, or sympathisers from abroad,” Odeke affirms.
They have, in about two years, been able to collect about Sh30m.
The other division is the Pan African, for the people who are interested in leadership and governance. They are using debate as a starting poit to  train people to speak and express themselves.
This gave birth to the Truth Debate Club, which has registered a lot of success. They had the first British Parliamentary Debate Tournament in East Africa, and have represented UCU and the country in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Rwanda in the past two years. They have held other debates around UCU like ‘Senyonyi Unplugged.’
Pathfinders, a research arm of Plat Revo, is also in place. He says people need knowledge and information, and that’s what the Pathfinders do. They are currently doing research on environmental sustainability and hope to make good-policy suggestions to UCU for use of alternative fuels other than firewood.The Arts Lovers another group Odeke formed, Azania, which was started in March 2010. Platforms for poetry and artistry are held every month and the grand Azania is once every four months.
Besides the management skills he possesses, he also plays the guitar, has a knack for art and music though he says most of them are skills he’s still developing as he discovers even more.
He has great interest in photography which he says is where his passion lies.
Print:: Email:: more...

Profile