My name is Claire and I am a third year medical student at King’s College London having studied International Health at UCL last year, and Mo is likewise a third year medic who I managed to pursuade to come with me to the Innovation’s Evening at the Royal Society of Medicine a few of weeks ago. Since being truly blown away by Simon’s presentation on ColaLife, we have likewise caught the ColaLife bug and wanted to see how we could help this incredible project! When we found out that ColaLife was looking to expand into other countries and had a spotlight on Uganda so it got us thinking …
It just so happened that between 25 March and 2 April, we will be leading a team of 15 volunteers on a trip to Uganda. We are supporting a local grassroots NGO called HORARD (Hope Revival Agency for Rural Development) in delivering workshops on HIV/AIDS, meeting the members of their income generation projects and raising funds to build a school for the orphans of the Barlonya masacre. We will be splitting into five teams to cycle 700km of northern Uganda; visiting 91 different communities, working in 53 different schools, training 23 different rural youth groups, encouraging 11 different income generation projects, holding a national press conference and visiting Parliament! We thought as we will be meeting with over 30,000 Ugandans anyway, why miss this opportunity to do some extensive research for ColaLife so the ground work is already done?!
So that’s it – we leave on Friday – kitted out with all sorts of questionnaires, dictaphones, cameras, ColaLife t-shirts and aidpod prototypes! We will be adding blog posts, videos and photos as and when we find internet access so watch this space!!
I hope you get a chance to visit Keframa College , a new secondary school, in northern Uganda on your trip. My dear friend, Augustine Kello Kezzy, is the Executive Director. The school opened its doors this past February 2011. The community got together and built the school. They have many needs. I’ve been personally sponsoring a student there, and also supporting them on a monthly basis with some financial help. We’ve talked often about financial independence by developing a business. They are working towards this goal and want to purchase a brick-making machine that would help them support themselves financially.
Augustine and I are currently working together to create a nonprofit organization, developing the constitution and other important documents necessary. We have named the new organization Keframa Youth Development Foundation (KYDF).
Here is Augustine’s contact information, if you get a chance to visit.
Augustine Kezzy Okello
Executive Director
KEFRAMA College
Abunga Road
Barr Sub-county
PO BOX 848
Lira-Uganda
Tel: +256 772 895 012
E-mail:keframacollege@yahoo.co.uk
Web site: http://www.keframacollege.org