We are excited to announce a new partnership with a small team of volunteers led by Richard Oceng, a Ugandan attorney and partner of Pepperdine University's Sudreau Global Justice Institute. This relationship with Richard developed through E4 founders Eric and Brynn Schmidt’s older son, Ryan, who graduated from the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in 2025. He spent a summer in Uganda and made a follow-up trip working with Richard through the Sudreau Global Justice Institute. Ryan later introduced us to Richard and to the volunteer work Richard was doing in his home village in the Gulu region of northern Uganda.

This region was the epicenter of more than two decades of brutal conflict between the Ugandan government and Joseph Kony’s LRA. Many children were abducted and forced to kill family members and neighbors, and then enslaved as child soldiers. Nearly two decades after the LRA insurgency, northern Uganda has experienced relative peace and some urban development, but many victims in rural villages still carry deep intergenerational trauma, while also facing prolific land disputes and poverty. Our partner, Richard, grew up witnessing many of these atrocities, and we are so thankful to work with him and his team to bring God’s love to this community, many of whom have felt forgotten by God. Historically, the villagers here were farmers and livestock owners. All of their animals were stolen, and crops were destroyed during the 1980s through raids, which preceded this horrific war. This has led to decades of poverty and despair. Together, our desire is to show them God is close to the broken-hearted and loves them. We do this by meeting physical needs that bring dignity to people, and by sharing the Gospel message through larger gatherings and prayer meetings. The Gospel message of hope is already prevalent in what we have been able to accomplish with Richard and his team.

At E4 Project, we partner with local leaders because they know their people and communities better than we ever can. Whenever we start working with new partners, we start slowly. We run small, one-time programs to ensure that the people we partner with have the capacity to manage them effectively. We started with Richard and his team in December, 2025, with a Christmas food distribution that provided rations to 60 families to reduce the food scarcity that they experience. We then conducted livestock training in spring 2026, distributing goats, chickens, and maize seeds. Richard shared that there was a true sense of restoration after more than four decades without livestock, and many villagers see God working in their midst for the first time in decades through the work of E4 and Richard’s team.