Shipping container outfitted in Omaha will deliver state-of-the-art education to remote Uganda
- Julie Anderson
- May 24
- 4 min read
May 24, 2025 - written by Julie Anderson of the Omaha World Herald
Omaha native Jamie Nollette describes the nonprofit organization she co-founded in 2010 as a “community catalyst” that helps identify needs in the remote area of northern Uganda where it works and recruits partners who can help address them.
In other words, it takes a village to help a village.
That collaboration was on display this week when Pipeline Worldwide unveiled a shipping container that has been outfitted as a state-of-the-art medical simulation and training laboratory. A handful of local companies partnered on the conversion. The University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security is serving as a partner in the programming the group offers.
The container will begin its journey next month and, some three months later, take its place in Pipeline’s Lonyi Village Innovation Learning Center in Moyo, Uganda.
It’s expected to fire up in January and begin delivering medical education and training in an area where the nearest opportunities for either are a 13 ½-hour bus ride away. The container is equipped with a realistic mannequin that can simulate pregnancy and delivery and technology that will allow for virtual training, either recorded or delivered live.
Plans call for placing the container adjacent to the site where Pipeline plans to build two classrooms on the campus, which already features woodworking and welding shops. The organization also has plans to build short-term lodgings for up to 60 people to make it easier for other organizations to send people to teach and carry out their own projects.
“The whole concept of this is to bring the education to the people,” said Nollette, the organization’s executive director. Although she now lives in Phoenix, Nollette grew up in Omaha. She graduated from Omaha Northwest High School, earned a degree in elementary education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and taught at two Omaha Public Schools elementary schools.
Among the fourth-graders Nollette taught was Terence “Bud” Crawford. The boxing champ has traveled with her to Uganda several times and gave her a shoutout in the commencement address he delivered at the University of Nebraska at Omaha this spring.
Nollette said Pipeline chose to work in northern Uganda because it’s so hard to reach that other groups don’t go there and because it has great need. In addition to a shortage of health care workers, it lacks roads, clean water and electricity, and has high rates of maternal and neonatal mortality. Addressing them is one of the group’s goals.
Because of its close proximity to several international borders and its significant refugee population, residents also face the threat of emerging infectious diseases. Uganda was among the first nations with outbreaks of Ebola.
Being from Omaha, Nollette was aware of the role UNMC and Nebraska Medicine played in treating Americans who had contracted the often-deadly virus.
She contacted Dr. James Lawler, an associate director of the Global Center. He traveled to Moyo with Nollette a year ago.
“They have incredible experience and skills, but in order to go in and do work ... you have to have relationships,” she said. “We pave the way and help bring them in so they can have immediate access and don’t have to spend years trying to establish that.”
Lawler said his team saw the work the organization was doing with the local health system and was impressed with how involved the group was in the community and how engaged it was in the community’s needs.
The UNMC team, he said, hopes to work with its Ugandan partners at Makerere University in Kampala to develop training programs that can be used at the new site. The team already is working on programs to train local providers on potential management of dangerous infections. That also blends with the organization’s focus on maternal and child health, since high-consequence infections during pregnancy can fuel outbreaks.
Dr. Jeffrey Smith, Pipeline’s chief strategy officer and former chief operating officer with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said the partnership also allows Pipeline and its local partners to serve as sentinels in case of outbreaks.
“They’re advising us in the work we do here in public health and health care delivery,” he said.
Lawler said the UNMC team also hopes to partner with the team in Moyo to pilot a portable isolation unit it has developed. The units are designed to reduce the risk of health care workers becoming infected while treating patients and to reduce the amount of protective gear they need to use and dispose of.
Smith said the modified shipping container, when it leaves, will be packed with tools, medical supplies and equipment, including incubators donated by Nebraska Medicine “that are surplus here but highly needed in Uganda.”
The group works with the local hospital and already has raised funds to provide it with several incubators and backup power for its neonatal intensive care unit.
Nollette said the modified shipping container is the 10th the organization has sent. One that’s currently en route holds 400 solar panels, which will help power Pipeline’s campus.
The build-out of the new container cost about $175,000, all but $52,000 of which was donated. Leo A Daly designed the unit; JE Dunn Construction managed the project. The unit was built at PML Construction in Springfield, and Miller Electric donated the electrical work. A Midsummer’s Mural created the mural that adorns one side. Pipeline is still working to raise $25,000 to ship it.
“It’s all about coming together, everybody bringing their expertise to the table and coming up with a solution,” Nollette said.
