YCVM aims to create a better future for vulnerable youth in Kumi, Uganda.

Silver Omakenyi, YCVM Founder and KCVS Director

Silver Omakenyi is the founder, vision bearer, and director of YCVM. He is a gifted musician, composer, and a Ugandan national champion Adungu (Ugandan Traditional bow harp) player, and instrument maker, who has trained a band of traditional instruments. It was by making instruments and selling them that he was able to finance his own early education. In 2002, he came to study music in the Ugandan capital city, Kampala, at the Reformed Theological College, where he met Aeri Lee. While at RTC, Aeri got to visit Silver’s home village near Kumi, where she found out that Silver, a young single man, was struggling to raise 9 orphans. It was in the following couple of years that Silver and some of his fellow visioners shared their dream of caring for and raising up the vulnerable children in their community. A few years later, YCVM was born. Silver has been the tireless leader YCVM’s three-fold ministries: taking care of the sponsored children, going out on outreach ministries, and the on-going “Kumi Christian Visionary School” building project.

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Aeri Lee and Ben Wong, Founding Members

Aeri began volunteering in Uganda in 1997 at Reformed Theological College in Kampala. She has taught worship and music there every year since.  Aeri met Silver in 2002 when he enrolled in the certificate program at the college, and visited his village in Kumi.  It was then that she learned of Silver's dream of helping vulnerable youth through education. Aeri and Ben visited Kumi in 2007 to see the beginnings of the school construction, and over the years have returned to Kumi to see the school grow.  When they aren't volunteering in Uganda, Aeri and Ben reside in Castro Valley, CA.

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