Our Community: Organizational Founders

From its inception, Positive Planet has been a partnership. The following people played key roles in the creation of the organization.

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Positive Planet founders meet with Mr. Vincent Semukula (center), the Rakai District local council (LC5) chairman.

Dr. Daniel Murokora

Daniel Murokora, or Dr. Dan as he is known by many in our sister school communities, is a leading obstetrician in Uganda. A former director of obstetrics at Masaka Regional Hospital he is now the Clinical Director of the Uganda Women's Health Initiative, a research project dedicating to reducing the tragically high rate of death due to cervical cancer in the developing world. Along with friend and colleague Dr. Marc Sklar, Dan visited St. Andrews Matale Hill Primary School in October 2003, saw teachers and students in desperate need of support and decided to take action.

For the past four years, Dan has worked tirelessly to build Positive Planet’s Sister School Program. Meeting with head teachers and parents, monitoring the quality and cost effectivness of our multiple construction projects, as well as initiating creative partnerships with government and civic leaders are just of a few of the essential tasks that Dan performs on a purely voluntary basis. Returning to Matale Hill Primary School and seeing the remarkable progress that we have made, Dan whispered to a friend, “This is the happiest day of my life.” Having people like Dan as part of the Positive Planet community is a key component to our success.

Dr. Marc Sklar

For four years Dr. Marc Sklar was privileged to work in rural Uganda as a public health physician. It is a region of the world whose people suffer unthinkable poverty and disease. Living for months at a time in the small town of Kalisizo he had the idea of partnering his children’s school, The Hannah Senesh Community Day School with a large, public primary school, The St. Andrews Matale Hill Primary School. To be honest, when asked he will admit to having this idea a full year before he finally visited Matale Hill. Like many a good idea, he avoided taking the first step, telling himself:

“It won’t work.”
“What good will it really do?”
“I don’t have the time.”

Then one day he decided to at least go and visit this school that a friend had told him about. Of course, this was the step that he was both avoiding and needed to take. Once he spent a day with the children, teachers and parents of this school they became friends, a part of his community and so Positive Planet's Sister School Program was born.

This in a nutshell is the purpose of Positive Planet. To expand our children’s experience of community to include a sister school in need of our support and friendship, helping them to achieve the same goals we have for our children, the possibility of a healthy and happy life, a life of meaning, a life that contributes to those around us.

Father Joseph Kato Bakulu

Father Kato is a Superintendent of Schools for the Rakai District of Uganda. Born and raised in Rakai, he is a friend to all that know him. From the creation of the Sister School Program he has never stopped working on behalf of the teachers and children of all of our sister schools, whether or not they are in his district. He has been a leader in Positive Planet’s goal of seeking active partnership from our entire school communities of parents, teachers as well as students. As Father Kato has said many times, a project like Positive Planet can inspire great change but ultimately the best charity begins at home.

Michael Greene

Since his adolescence, Michael has maintained an involvement in issues related to environmental responsibility and the equitable distribution of resources. When his children became of school age, he began to occasionally visit their schools to discuss how they could help protect the rainforests and other critical natural habitats.

When Marc Sklar, his lifelong friend, returned from Uganda and organized an effort to link the Matale Hill school with Hannah Senesh, the school his children were attending, Michael realized that this effort could be done at other schools as well. He approached his daughter's middle school to see if their upcoming Earth Day effort could center on creating another sister school partnership. When the teacher and administrators at Ryan middle school reacted enthusiastically, Positive Planet became a multi-school program.