Just wanted to give you a more detailed update on what's happening on our side. We're making amazing progress with our projects!
Currently, we're actively engaged in teaching 120 families the art of growing their own organic food. We're using permaculture and agroecology techniques to empower them with the knowledge and skills they need to cultivate their own sustainable gardens. The best part is that our community gardens are flourishing! We've got a wide variety of fruits and vegetables sprouting up beautifully.
We're super excited because soon we'll be able to distribute the bountiful harvest to the community and those who are in need. It's going to be a special Christmas ceremony where everyone can enjoy fresh, homegrown produce. But our mission doesn't stop there! We're also deeply committed to ensuring food security and contributing to a cleaner world. By promoting sustainable farming practices, we're actively working towards reducing soil erosion and combatting the effects of climate change.
Léonce
Hey Steve! I hope you're doing well. I wanted to reach out and share some important news about what's been happening at our center. Over the past three days, we experienced some really heavy rain, as you can see from the pictures. Unfortunately, this led to water entering our center's compound and causing the walls of our room of studies to fall.
The good news is that no one was injured during this incident. However, we now face the challenge of raising the building again, but this time, we want to make it even stronger so that we can continue with our projects. We've already mobilized the community and they've been incredibly supportive, but we still need additional help to ensure the building is rebuilt properly.
I wanted to share this situation with you because I know how passionate you are about our work in teaching permaculture to the community and empowering children through education.
Life on the edge
Permaculture training and the resulting initiatives give focus, hope and kick-start projects all of which are supportive and complementary to the long-term success of the refugee groups and families in settlements such as Nakivale. Uganda has had an open-door policy to its more unstable neighbours for many years, and Nakivale is home to people from at least 8 different nations, and many have been there for years.
Groups like these are trying to make sense of, to rationalise and make the most of what is a difficult situation. There are on-going training programs within the settlement, in livelihood skills like cooking, hair-dressing motor-bike maintenance, food growing, permaculture and many other topics. Those within the settlements have little if any financial support and are very reliant on their own initiatives and mutual support.
I have such admiration and want to support these youth leaders who really are showing a way forward. How many people will be displaced in coming decades and how can permaculture and related disciplines help build capacity so that we may better respond to future calamities when they happen? I cannot but help think that between resource wars, economic collapse and severe climate change related events that settlements like this are a glimpse into the future and are indeed showing us the way forward.
Clearly members need resources, funds and seeds, but also they need to feel connected, part of a bigger whole and connected to the wider outside world. It can feel very isolating and forgotten in these huge settlements for displaced people. There is much camaraderie and mutual support, but also constant new challenges from a steady influx of new comers, weather events and the general fragility of the situation.
Overall, these are places of hope, of renewal, of beginning again and linking to the powerful and positive forces of co-operation, solidarity and resilience.
Steve Jones
Fundraiser for Stella Amuge
Stella has been a key member with Sector39 since 2020. In that time she has been putting her skills and training and a project evaluator to good use, visiting projects in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. She is currently engaged in her second her as a maters Student, study disaster relief and bringing her perspective to this vital area of study
Justice past weekend I did a zoom meeting with several women from the camp who engage in crochet, knitting, and sewing as income generating activities. I'm hoping, since we have those arts in common, that I will be able to assist them with some seed money for their inputs. And will be looking for ways, possibly to help them with selling their product.