Francis Ssuubi did not learn about the problem of parental incarceration from the outside. He lived it.

Before his arrest, Francis had started a vocational school, the Institute of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering. When he left to start a second one, Realine Polytechnic, his former partners at the first school were angered and had him falsely accused of not paying examination centre fees he had, in fact, paid. He was arrested and held on remand, at a time when getting bail was difficult.

Inside Murchison Bay Prison, Francis had what he describes as a revelation: a reason for being there, and a calling to start Wells of Hope. He wrote its concept and constitution while still incarcerated.

It was there, too, that he discovered what inmates worried about most: not their own sentence, but the families they’d left behind. He watched his own mother’s health decline under the weight of his imprisonment. She died eight months after his release.