For nine months out of the year, one Denver construction worker spends his nights huddled in front of a computer, walking his team in Uganda through blueprints and building processes over video chat. He spends the other three on the ground in Africa, leading the charge.
Patrick Lutalo’s nights coincide with mornings for the construction crew in central Uganda’s Mityana District, where Lutalo grew up. The team peppers him with questions from abroad for roughly two hours as they prepare to start their day and he winds down for bed.
“When I first met these young people, they didn’t have any clue about construction,” Lutalo said. “They had never handled any construction tool in their hands, so we started right from zero. … They were just excited, eager to learn.”
Teach Men to Fish, Lutalo’s organization, mentors young Ugandans in construction while building projects that serve the community. The Colorado-registered nonprofit launched in September 2016, according to records from the Colorado Secretary of State.
Since then, Lutalo and his group have built a maternity facility in the village of Naama and are working on an outpatient surgical center in Myanzi. Lutalo said he identifies projects based on what skills he can teach the apprentices during the construction process and the benefit the end product will have for the community.
Once the new health center opens, which Lutalo hopes will be by the end of 2026 or early 2027, it will have the potential to serve more than 100,000 Ugandans in the region, he said.
Apprentices with Teach Men to Fish, a Ugandan nonprofit that trains youth in construction, work to build walls for a community health center in the Mityana District on April 19, 2024. (Photo provided by Mark Miller).
People from across the country have already started traveling to Mityana for better medical care, at least from the already constructed maternity ward, said Shaka David, leader of the Uganda-based Namukozi Integrated Youth Development Group and Lutalo’s right-hand man. David takes control of the on-the-ground operations when Lutalo is in Denver.
“I went through the apprenticeship program while (in Denver), and I was able to learn all these things,” Lutalo said. “Then I said, ‘Why can’t I do the same thing and pass on these skills to these young people, to people who can still use these skills to better their lives?’ Life is so short.”
People within Lutalo’s group have come and gone, but its size remains approximately the same — roughly two dozen young men and women, Lutalo said. As of December, the crew numbered 28.
“Almost every time he’s with us, we are taking on new skills in different stages of construction,” David said.
The youth group leader first met Lutalo in 2016 at a church meeting in the Mityana District’s Namukozi Church of Uganda. That’s when Lutalo first offered to train youth from his home village of Namukozi in construction.
“Many of us never went to school, and others can not afford higher education,” David said.
When construction first started, no one but Lutalo had ever sat down in front of a blueprint, David added. The process since then has been one of continued learning, and the group is “curious to learn everything put forward,” he said.
Seeing how eager the nonprofit’s apprentices are to learn and how they’re able to apply their skills to other jobs after leaving the group is inspiring, Lutalo said. “It just fills my heart … that, yes, I’m making a difference,” he added.
Most of the nonprofit’s funding is facilitated through word of mouth or grassroots-type outreach, like checks written over happy hour drinks, Mark Miller, president of Teach Men to Fish’s board of directors, said.
“He walks the walk and talks the talk,” Miller said. “He gets in there and mixes cement with them. … He gets right down on the ground with the blueprints, and, you know, goes over every aspect of it with each person to make sure they understand.”
Miller met Lutalo through his parents, for whom Lutalo used to do repairs and odd jobs. He called seeing Lutalo work with the apprentices “life-changing.”
Lutalo will teach one group of apprentices, watch them to make sure they’ve grasped the concept and then have them teach others, making it a continuous process, Miller said. He also rotates the apprentices through each of the ongoing processes — from welding on the roof to plastering on the walls to sealing the windows — so they walk away with hands-on experience for every skill possible.
“Patrick is a caring servant man of God who gives it all,” David said. “We have nothing to pay for him, but only God can reward him for us.”
Lutalo doesn’t want to be glorified for his work in the community, David said. He always says it’s his duty to serve people.
“There are some who are quicker, faster to learn, but we help each other,” Lutalo said. “Nobody is left behind. If someone is weaker in something, we need to make sure we lift them up, and then we encourage them to pick up the pace.”
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