A ea t ACTIONSNOTWORDS
Have you ever been travelling in Africa and wondered how you could lend a helping hand? Our story began when a group of Spanish and British tourists were travelling through Uganda on their way to see the gorillas in the Virunga mountains in 2008.
They were driving from Murchinson’s Falls Nature Reserve to Queen Elizabeth Park when their converted lorry got stuck on the mud road that goes through a village called Igayaza. They took shelter in the nearest building, which turned out to be a very poor primary school made of mud, with only a few desks, cracked blackboards and ragged curtains separating classrooms. On enquiry, they found out that the local community had founded the school for AIDS orphans and the children of refugees and other very poor families who could not afford the minimal fees for the government schools in the area.
Whilst waiting for the lorry to be extricated from the mud, one of the group, who teaches English to primary school children in Spain, started teaching the children songs and was very impressed by how quickly they learned. The group as a whole felt that these children deserved support. They asked the head teacher if there was anything that could be sent to help, thinking of books, pencils or other equipment. But the head teacher replied, “What we need is a proper school”. When the group returned home they decided to set up an NGO, Adelante Africa, which means ‘Go Forward Africa’ in Spanish, and began to raise money to rebuild the school.
Less than two years later, in March 2010, the new school, St Joseph’s primary school, was opened. However, it was immediately obvious that there was much more to be done, and that if we wanted these primary school children to flourish, we needed to help in other ways.
How Adelante Africa develops as an Organisation
Adelante Africa soon acquired a Ugandan branch and added to its name Tugende Omumaiso which means ‘Let’s Go Together’ in Runyoro, the local language. Adelante Africa was included in the list of NGO’s recognised by the Spanish government in 2010, and in 2014 acquired the added distinction of being recognised as “of public interest” by the Spanish Home Office, and we hope to soon also have it officially recognised as a UK charity.
Adelante Africa has a very strict transparency policy. All donations go in their entirety to the projects in Uganda. The members of both boards work on a wholly voluntary basis, and members from Europe visiting Uganda pay their airfares and all costs incurred out of their own pockets. Being a community based NGO, Adelante Africa’s operations are localised, largely restricted to the Birembo sub-county in the Kakumiro District. We work very closely with our Ugandan volunteers, with the idea that ultimately we will be able to bow out and they will carry on with the running of all of our projects. We believe that working closely with members of the community is the best, if not the only, way an NGO can help communities to move forward.
Adelante Africa’s Community Projects
Adelante Africa has a special interest in children and education. Apart from setting up and supporting schools and sponsoring children’s education, we believe that the best way to improve the lives and the education of children is to empower their families to be able to look after them better, hence many of the projects involving the families in the area focus on more up-to-date methods of farming and business projects which come from the community itself. Our role is to support such initiatives where we can.
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For example we have a loan programme that lends money with no interest to local farmers and people who want to set up small businesses. Then there is a Women’s Sewing Group where women are trained to make clothes for their families and villages so enabling them to generate the cash needed for school fees and medicines. We have also started a sustainable cottage industry producing sunflower oil, which provides farmers in the area with an alternative cash crop and the community (who have been using palm oil up to now) with healthier cooking oil.
In the area of health we work with World Vision giving children of six and under Vitamin A, and de-worming all school age children every six months. We also have a six monthly chicken vaccination programme where we vaccinate all the chickens in the area against Newcastle Disease and Avian Flu. Our Green Vegetable project tries to promote the consumption of vegetables by giving free seeds of local and imported vegetables to cooperative groups. We have also started a project with doctors from Madrid hospitals where five or six surgeons with local medical backup, operate on conditions like hernias and tumours which local people have suffered with, at times for 10 or 15 years.
The Old Cornelian SUMMER 2017
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