Our names are Julie and Darren and we are off to volunteer in a little village called Bunambutye in Eastern Uganda in May this year.

 

Please allow us to tell you a little bit about the village and the fantastic residents that live there - hopefully their strength, courage and continual hope (despite living in abject poverty) will touch your heart as it has mine.

Life for villagers is hard - they have no electricity and water is collected from boreholes. The recurring pattern of drought and famine is shocking, there is a food shortage every year at around this time and malnourishment is a serious problem. The extent of the food shortage depends on the previous year’s harvest which is getting worse due to climate change and the resultant unreliable rain.

Let me tell you a bit about a few of our village residents...

Naome

 

Naome and her family are living in severe poverty, they live in a one room mud hut and are really struggling to survive. Recently one of her children fell ill and she took him to the medical centre for treatment, they referred her to the hospital 10 km away as the child needed a drip which was not available locally. She had no money for transport so she started to walk carrying the child and the child died on the way to the hospital. I found it heartbreaking that this could actually happen in our modern world and felt more motivated than ever to try and make some positive changes in these villages so that occurrences like this can hopefully someday become a thing of the past.

Jennifer

Jennifer is looking after 15 of her children and grandchildren- all of the grand-children’s parents have died from aids and so have four of her grand-children. She looks after the remaining children on an extremely low income in a very small house, all of the children are in school and doing well - Jennifer would love to own her own shop one day in the town.

The reason have chosen to volunteer in Bunambutye is down to an old school friend. She visited the village last year and after discovering the problems quit her job, moved out there and has now dedicated her life to helping the residents solve these pressing of problems. I kept thinking if she can do that, I can at least give up 2 weeks of my annual leave to help out!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Now onto business... we REALLY want to help these people - These guys don’t want to live on handouts, they want to be self sufficient and we can help them do this. By donating the cash you were going to spend on your lunch time sandwich / cheeky glass of wine after work you could be making a real difference. Money will go directly to...

·         Provision of mosquito nets

·         Aids / HIV education 

·         Community health projects (teaching the villagers the basics of primary health care to avoid preventable diseases)

·         Provision of farming tools and techniques to reduce bad harvests and famine

 

As it is early days for the projects, a specific charity has not yet been set up however a local charity (Jenga) have kindly agreed to accept donations through their just giving page which will be allocated fully to the projects we will be working on. You can therefore be safe in the knowledge that EVERY penny that you donate will go straight to this village.