CMU is Gold
Growing up in Uganda, Mathias Mulumba didn’t think education was for him. Education in Uganda is expensive, and Mulumba’s parents were poor. Hoping to give their son the advantage of schooling, they sent him to live with an aunt, who was abusive. With nowhere else to turn, Mulumba ran away and lived on the streets of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city.
While “going through the trash bin and begging,” Mulumba met good people who gave him a home, took him to school, and taught him faith. “I couldn’t focus in school because of the trauma,” he explained. “But I survived with the faith they gave to me by introducing me to God.”
In 2008, Mulumba came to Colorado to marry his wife Jolene, a Grand Junction native whom he met when she was an engineering student doing mission work in Uganda. In 2010, Mulumba founded a nonprofit, Father to the Fatherless, to “give hope to the people that I had left behind,” said Mulumba.
“I didn’t have money,” he shared, “but I have gifts and talents, and I think that’s what it takes. We don’t need to wait to have a million dollars to really change a life. If you have a heart, you can start from there.”
While Mulumba didn’t have a formal education, he knew how to work hard, and he knew how to share his story and play the guitar. With these skills, he began fundraising, never keeping a dime for himself and ensuring that all money raised went—and continues to go—to direct assistance.
Over the last fourteen years, Father to the Fatherless has accomplished an incredible amount. The first step was purchasing eighty-three acres in Mulumba’s village and constructing a primary school. This school now serves about 250 students who are orphans or from low-income families.
Another challenge was providing purified drinking water to his village. Next up, the organization built health clinics, and then during the pandemic, they created a vocational training center for girls and women to learn marketable skills that ensure them a voice in their future. Father to the Fatherless has also increased agricultural efficiency, provided electricity, helped people upgrade their homes, and supported a local student who enrolled at CMU. It is also the region’s largest employer. When Mulumba sees a need, he takes action to fill it.
This holds true in Mulumba’s personal life, as well. While in Grand Junction, he became a US citizen, completed his GED, and started a family with his wife, welcoming three daughters. On December 13, 2024, he graduated from Colorado Mesa University with a bachelor of business administration degree, with concentrations in management and entrepreneurship. He was also honored as the student commencement speaker. It was a well-deserved honor for someone who grew up believing that he couldn’t achieve an education.
Mulumba credits his CMU professors and coursework with helping him make an even bigger impact in Uganda.
“I’m grateful for the professors that have worked with me, that have viewed this project. They’re like, ‘Okay, you can do this, you can do this, you can change it. You can work like this, you can do this,’ and stuff like that. That’s been just a game changer for me,” he explained.
Because Mulumba believes mightily in the power of education, his future goals include opening a secondary school and working with Colorado Mesa University to open an African campus.
“What we have here is gold,” he shared. “And my people there, they would spend hours and hours digging that gold. Currently, they have no way to find that. So, if there is any way, I would be grateful to extend Colorado Mesa University there, for my people.”