ACT Uganda Blog

The work of the HANDS Program (Helping Agricultural New Development & Sustainability) During the year of 2021, 120 farmers were trained in permagardening, a technology that involves the creation of a climate smart organic garden around the kitchen that produces vegetables throughout the year. Ms. Hellen Nankunda was one of them and a visit to her garden was arranged. The permagarden team visited her garden in Rwamahano Village, Ikamiro Parish to check on her progress. She had a well-created garden with various varieties of vegetables planted in it. These varieties included cabbage, spinach, dodo and nightshade. Selection of these varieties majorly depended upon the availability of these seeds in her community. She employs various measure to take care of her garden such as weeding, organic manuring, mulching and watering at times during sunny season. Hellen says, ever since she created this garden, her household has been having plenty of nutritious vegetables from her garden for hom...

I just came out of two ZOOM meetings for ACT. These days, we have many ZOOM meetings. Partially because our Board is still meeting in person quarterly and partially because we have not been able to travel to Uganda for over 2 years! I thought you might be interested in how we work - at least on the US side. We have seven Teams made up of all volunteers with an ACT US Board Member leading each team. These Teams meet about once-a-month, sometimes less. We try to include our Ugandan staff in these meetings when we can. The 8-hour time difference makes that difficult. Our team work here is for the purpose of supporting the work being done by our nine staff members in Uganda. We have about 45 volunteer team members on our teams. Perhaps you are one of them! Thanks!  Let's do some math - and this will involve making some assumptions. 45 volunteers who may average 5 (sometimes a lot more) hours a week with, at least, three of us working 30 hours or more per week. When you total the hours ...

 

Muko High School (MHS) is a secondary school administered by a partnership between ACT and the Anglican Diocese of Kigezi. The High School is a recent recipient of a $50,000 Rotary Global Grant to provide solar electrical power to improve education and learning along with improvements in some of the school's sanitation and hygiene infrastructure. In addition, the grant provides for teacher training to utilize computers and other electrically powered equipment to improve educational outcomes at the school and in the community. The grant was developed through a collaborative effort of four Rotary Clubs, three of their governing Districts, and Rotary International headquarters.  The clubs in Midland, Traverse City, Petaluma California, and Kabale Uganda along with the US Districts provided 75% of the funds with the balance contributed by Rotary International.   Solar panels are being installed on the roofs of the school, the dormitories, and other auxiliary buildings to provide n...

 On this rainy April day in Michigan with the piles of snow disappearing, I am going to share with you a very interesting and exciting effort that ACT has been working on since May, 2021. The ACT Uganda and ACT MI folks have been discussing ways to make ACT sustainable for the long-term whether the US fund-raising is active or not. This would ensure future financial support for the work in Uganda without the dependence upon the U.S. donations/grants. We studied Mohammad Yunus' Book, A World of Three Zeros that describes the success of social businesses for just this purpose.   Social businesses, as defined by Yunus, are those that work to achieve three things: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions. The idea is to create a business, needed by the community, that pays workers, ultimately makes a profit and is good or at least not harmful to the environment. That profit would not go to business owners but would go back to ACT, as an NGO, to sustain ou...