Watoto Children’s Choir performing in Moosomin
Choir supports women and children living in Uganda and South Sudan
April 7, 2025, 1:27 pm
Ryan Kiedrowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A choir carrying a message of pure hope is coming to the Moosomin Baptist Church on April 16 as the highly energetic Watoto Children’s Choir returns.
This particular choir is currently on tour across Canada with their show titled “Better Days: There is Hope” to share their message of God’s unfailing love and raise money for women and children in Uganda and South Sudan.
“They’re a phenomenal group,” says Kerry Coleman, Administrator with the Moosomin Baptist Church. She recalled seeing the choir about 10 years ago during their last tour, which included a stop in Moosomin. “I remember sitting in the audience and getting goosebumps listening to their cause. I brought my kids. My son would have been eight, and he wanted to donate all of his allowance to Watoto because he understood what their cause was like. So for me, I not only ‘got it’ as an adult, but I watched it in my child’s eyes as a parent.”
The choir itself is one part of Watoto—the Swahili word for ‘children.’ The overall goal for Watoto is to provide a safe place for vulnerable women and children in Uganda and South Sudan, tracing its roots back to 1984 when Canadians Gary and Marilyn Skinner began the Watoto Church in Kampala.
“The choir performance is really sharing the hope that has been brought into their lives because of Watoto,” explains Johanna Cousineau, Choir Co-ordinator with the Watoto Canada team. “Most of the children have been abandoned or orphaned, and so Watoto has taken them and given them a home with a mom and siblings. It is a permanent home for them, and it raises them all the way through.”
Children in Watoto receive all the necessities to grow including love, education, and medical care. Some of the children also audition to be part of the choir where they sing, dance, and share their story and hope for the future.
“Their greatest need right now is for sponsorship,” Cousineau says.
“Sponsorship is an ongoing commitment for the raising of the children. It goes directly to running the household and providing their education.”
During the choir’s time in Moosomin, they will stay with local families who generously opened up their homes.
“We can’t wait for them to be here! In our congregation, we had eight families offer a place for the choir to stay,” Coleman says. “It’s not only that they come and they play, but we provide them meals for their the next day. We provide supper that night, somewhere that they can do their homework in the afternoon before the show. It’s literally a whole church thing, not just a little show that they’re putting on.”
“For us, it means community.”
Legacy of positive change
Those early days of the Skinners’ involvement in Uganda setting up a church became a response to a crisis of orphan children in that country as a result of civil war and a burgeoning AIDS epidemic.
“The goal of Watoto back in the ‘80s when it was started, was to raise up good, honest and not corrupt leaders in their country,” Cousineau said. “They’re raising up young men and young women who treat their family properly.
They’re stopping that cycle of abuse. They’re teaching them, they’re training them, they’re raising them with love, but more than that, they’re also giving them the vocation and the way to perpetuate that.”
Those young boys and girls would grow to be positive role models as men and women striving to make positive change in their country.
“So they are now good moms and good dads taking care of their families, but they also move on to have good jobs,” Cousineau continued. “They don’t have to be in jobs of leadership to be changing their country, they’re your everyday workers. They are your plumbers and your mechanics, but they are honest plumbers and honest mechanics who have been saved from their life of trauma, and they go forward and make a life. They change the whole of the country.
They change Uganda. They have judges. They have police officers. They have lawyers, people who have come through the program and become these things, and that’s how they’re changing the culture of Uganda.”
Cousineau adds that one of the big things that sets Watoto apart is that the children no longer live in poverty, or even knowing what a life in such conditions would be like—a wonderful reality.
“They are given their childhood back,” she said. “For example, I overheard a conversation that happened where someone was asking, ‘What’s it like to live in a slum? Tell me what that’s about.’ And the child did not know, because they have been rescued from poverty. We are not trying to help them exist in the old, bad place. We are giving them a home.”
The children’s choir is a way to spread the message of Watoto’s work around the world, with a number of tours ongoing. In addition to the Canadian tour, there are also choirs performing in the U.S., UK, and Australia.
“Almost all year there is a choir traveling somewhere in the world,” Cousineau said. “The children only travel once, and they go to one country. So we don’t take 20 children and bring them around the world for two years worth of touring. But in that, they also are getting amazing English skills. These children are getting that English experience and training while they are here, and they have a school teacher that travels with them and takes care of their school while they are on tour. Every tour has a school teacher.”
The life-changing chance to travel is unique for the choir members made up of children between the ages of eight to 15.
“In Uganda, the uniting language is English,” Cousineau said. “Certainly it’s not their official language, but it’s a uniting language. Even these children, their first language could be any number of different languages, but English is the one that brings everyone together.”
Since the first iteration of the children’s choir in 1994, Watoto has grown by leaps and bounds. Today, there are four main sections to the response being the Watoto Villages, Baby Watoto, Watoto Neighbourhood, and Keep a Girl in School.
Watoto Villages take the concept of community building literally through three safe villages named Buloba, Bbira, and Suubi. In these villages, children find a safe place where they can experience a loving family life as they offer classrooms, medical clinics, churches, playground, and homes.
Baby Watoto is focused on children up to two years old, providing them with a nanny and all the care they need until those babies are ready to move into a Watoto village. The goal of this program is to give babies the best possible start in life.
Watoto Neighbourhood helps vulnerable women in Uganda through adult literacy classes, discipleship, business skills training, and meaningful job opportunities.
Through the Keep a Girl in School program, providing the tools for girls to succeed is at the forefront, exemplifying the motto ‘when a girl stays in school, everyone wins.’
Canadian connection
So how can people in Moosomin help Watoto? According to Cousineau, sponsorship is the key.
“Sponsorship changes a life, and that’s because it changes everything about their life,” she said, explaining how the impact can be felt through the Watoto Neighbourhood section. “So if they are living in poverty, but they have parents or have a mom, they will support that mom. They will give that mom training and support her to be able to provide for her children. They will bring those children in and give them an education and support them that way.”
“You can sponsor Neighbourhood moms, and those are moms who still have their children living in their home with them, but Watoto is giving them a vocation and a job and taking care of their children with schooling and medical care and what have you,” Cousineau continued.
General donations also assist with Watoto on a broader basis, allowing for funds to be distributed as needed. One such example is a water project for Bbira, which needs to be expanded in order to keep up with a rising population. The project was quoted at around $87,000 with $82,500 currently raised.
“It was made many years ago for a very small number of people, and now there’s at least three times that number of people,” Cousineau explains of the current water infrastructure. “The water is not just for the Watoto children and families, it’s also for the village.”
While the Watoto Children’s Choir performance in Moosomin is free of charge, Coleman says that there will be opportunities for people to donate as well.
“There will be a love offering during the show, so you can put money in,” she said. “There will also be a table set up where they sell homemade things that are made from the women in Uganda. It’s not just the financial support, the prayers are definitely part of it for them. If you can’t help out financially, definitely pray. Pray for those kids. Pray that they are able to bring in the funds to support the people in Uganda. It doesn’t have to be just money.”
The Watoto Children’s Choir “Better Days: There is Hope” performance will start at 7 pm at the Moosomin Baptist Church (1117 Main Street) on Wednesday, April 16. All are welcome to attend.
