Gilbert Mfitundinda

Topics: Child Advocacy, Child Sponsorship, Children's Ministry, Compassion Alumni, Education, Highly Vulnerable Children, Leadership Development, Poverty, Youth and Young Adults

Gilbert Mfitundinda

Gilbert is the founder and CEO of Love Restoration, a community-based organization in southwestern Uganda that provides education, nutrition, and healthcare to 240 underprivileged children between the ages of three and sixteen. He came to the USA in 2016 to work as an alumni fellow with Compassion International. He served as a quality assurance specialist for a year before transferring into Compassion’s IT department, where he worked as a database administrator for six months. After his tenure with Compassion International, Gilbert moved to New Jersey to pursue his master’s degree at Eastern University as part of the fellowship program with Urban Promise International. While studying, he served in Urban Promise International’s after school programs in Camden, New Jersey.

Gilbert’s personal drive toward advocacy and social entrepreneurship stems from his own childhood experiences. For him, as the youngest of eight children raised in a remote region of southwestern Uganda, survival was a daily struggle. While still a child, his father passed away, his mother’s work as a peasant farmer barely kept the family fed, and his older siblings, apart from one brother, all dropped out of school. When he was seven years old, local church and community leaders invited him to participate in Compassion’s child development program. Compassion’s sponsorship provided him with nutritious meals, healthcare, schooling, and, eventually, the opportunity to pursue higher education. In 2012, Gilbert received his Bachelor of Science in Information Technology from Uganda Christian University, the first of his family to graduate from college. In May 2019, through Urban Promise International, Gilbert finished his master’s in Organizational Leadership from Eastern University in Pennsylvania.

Gilbert remains passionate about using his experiences and career path to advocate for the less fortunate and to provide transformative development resources to communities in need.

Gilbert now stays in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife Julia. He is a poignant and gifted communicator who enjoys speaking about the life-changing power of love, the plight of vulnerable children, effective solutions to poverty, excellence and servant-hood in leadership, and turning selfishness into selflessness.