We recently started a chicken rearing project with some of the benificiaries from our Home Visit Program. Eight families, most of which are affected by HIV/AIDS, are working with us to rais 200, soon to be 250, chickens. This will be an income generation project for these families who previously had no reliable source of income. Benififiaries are really excited. They are working together to raise the chickens and are undergoing some basic training on chciken rearing and business management orginizad by the KACCAD team.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
What is Amanda up to?
Amanda Milholland
KACCAD’s Peace Corps Volunteer
December 2006-November 2008
Some people have been asking me what I am up to. I have my fingers in many pies. I am working to help KACCAD strengthen its volunteer program which we started in August 2007, helping develop our student sponsorship program and working with our clients and my counterpart and supervisor to develop a chicken rearing project for eight families who are part of our home visit program for people living with HIV/AIDS. I am also helping one of our volunteers write fundraising letters for water and sanitation development and HIV/AIDS education support. On top of this I work with my supervisor to budget for our programs, write a quarterly newsletter and do other long term organization planning. When school is in session I also work with our volunteers and my counterpart to teach life skills to secondary and
vocational students at 4 schools. We are still looking seriously at how KACCAD will survive in the future. We do a lot of great work that so many people are happy to support but it is challenging to cover our organization running costs without grants that include administrative overhead or salaries and without an income generation project. I have seen KACCAD develop a lot over the last year+. At the same time we have a lot of work to do in my last year of service. With an increasingly steady volunteer pool of Real Uganda volunteers-international volunteers who come to
Aside from work, I often wake up with the sun. Running I watch the sunrise over
Though we face many challenges in our work and I in my life here, over all I look around and see that I am blessed to be here. I am blessed to know people so dedicated to serving their community even before themselves. Friends and supporters who read this, I hope you find people who inspire you as much.
Take care,
Amanda
A Brighter Future for Our Children
Dear KACCAD Supporters,
KACCAD is pleased to announce that we have better organized our student sponsorship program so as to best meet the needs of our students and be accountable to our sponsors. Our Real Uganda volunteers have helped us get our sponsorship program on track interviewing and photographing students who we have sponsored in the past and who we are prioritizing for future sponsorship. Now we can provide each sponsor with a photo, the career dreams and tuition costs of their student. This sponsorship program is founded on the belief that education is a way out of poverty. These children will shape the country in years to come. Your support can give them the best chance to bring about positive change in their communities and families. Our list of students, their tuition costs and photos are available to you on request. Please, see below an introduction the program. Email us for more information or check out our flickr account for photos and some brief sponsorship information.
In
There is no such thing as free education in
Students we sponsor attend two different kinds of school, day school and boarding school. Day school is straight tuition, and boarding school includes lodging and food during the te
rm. Boarding school has many advantages for children who have lost both parents providing them a stable place to live, food security and a good environment for study. The exchange rate is approximately Ush 1650 for every US $1.00. As with any currency however, this rate can be expected to fluctuate. With such a range of sponsorships people of all budgets can get involved in changing the life of a student. Fees for each student in Ugandan shillings are listed below along with information about the student. On top of this, a small administration fee of $15.00 for donations made through the KACCAD bank account and $7.00 for donations made through PayPal per term is required for the personal care of your sponsorship and our transportation to visit schools and students. Additional money is required for donations made through the KACCAD bank account because we are charged a bank fee of $6-$10 per donation received.
Each school year includes three terms, starting February, June and September. Prior to each term KACCAD will send out an e-mail to the sponsors to encourage them to pay tuition. The tuition payment can easily be made by wiring to the official bank account of KACCAD (see below for details), or through Global Volunteer Network, through PayPal (Commencing in March). Throughout the school year, each sponsor will receive a receipt of tuition and reports regarding their sponsor child. For the sake of the administration, please e-mail your e-mail and home address to kyosigacommunity@myway.com . (Photo of one of the OVCs seeking sponsorship)
Finally, sponsorship is the only chance for these children to be able to complete school. Once you have chosen to sponsor an orphan or underprivileged child, please try to be consistent with your payment of tuition. The lives of these children are very difficult. School may be the only thing that is consistent and safe in their lives. Therefore it is important for the children to know that they won’t once again be abandoned. Of course extenuating circumstances may mean that your sponsorship is cancelled, we would however encourage communication and if it becomes impossible to continue with your sponsorship, we will always work towards finding alternative sponsors to help these kids reach a level of education which can provide a job and security for their futures.
Many of the volunteers, who have met these children, are willing to help with advice or information concerning this program, please feel free to contact them.
From
From
From USA: Amanda Milholland, email: Amanda.milholland@gmail.com
Also, photos of each child are on line at http://www.flickr.com/photos/amandainuganda.
Your contribution to support a child’s education is a gift that will keep giving as it gives each child and their family hope and the skills to make a better life. If you decide to become a sponsor please e-mail kyosigacommunity@myway.com with the name of “your” child and we will contact you shortly. Thank you very much for helping a child to get a better future!
Best regards,
KACCAD team
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Student Sponsorship
KACCAD is looking for sponsorship for 46 students we have sponsored since 2001. Education is one of the best, longest lasting ways to change the life of a person as it increases one’s potential for improved income and quality of life without requiring constant aid from the government or NGOs. As gathered from interviews KACCAD conducted in 2006, an estimated 51% of people in our service area are illiterate. This figure is based on the percentage of i
nterviewees who either dropped out of school during primary education or did not attend at all. People without an education do not have equal access to services and employment. This is crippling to their ability to provide for their family and themselves. Your contribution can help us give children a future to dream about. Sponsorship of a primary student for day school is $75 a term (every 4 months), $175 per term will cover school fees for a secondary student attending day school and $200 will cover boarding school fees for a secondary student. This money will cover tuition and enable KACCAD to pay for postage and transport to keep sponsors in touch with their student/s. People who choose to sponsor students will receive a receipt for school payment and a report card from the student each term. A photo and letter written by the student will also be sent to the sponsor at the beginning of their sponsorship. Sponsors will have open communication which the children they support which KACCAD will help facilitate. If you are ready to change the life of a child by helping them get in or stay in school please contact KACCAD for details. (nursing student sponsored by KACCAD.)
Volunteer with KACCAD
Join the KACCAD team in serving most vulnerable community members in Wakiso District of Uganda. There are many opportunities for sharing your skills. We invite you to come live and work with us in
Our fee for volunteers is $650USD for the first month and $550USD per each additional month. The fee covers support while you prepare for
We will provide a suggested packing list and other support to volunteers who choose to work with KACCAD. If you require this or other information please don’t hesitate to let us know. You can find out more about KACCAD at www.volunteerkaccad.org. For more information about volunteering with us see our website, email us or visit www.therealuganda.com for information about volunteering with us through the Real Uganda.
Help Us Bring Clean Water to Wakiso District
We invite you and/or your group to help us meet the goal of providing ten new spring wells in Wakiso District by December of 2008. Water is the source of life yet so many people living in our district don’t have access to clean water. Your donation for construction of a spring well will help us bring safe water to an estimated 845 families per well. In 2007 we were able to construct 13 spring wells in Wakiso District with support from people like you. Your help can keep us on track with our goal of providing safe water sources for all residents in Wakiso District.
According to Wakiso District data from March 2004, it is estimated that almost 50% of the population does not have access to safe drinking water. Wakiso District data further indicates that people may travel as far as 3 km to reach a water source. In
an estimated 101,567 people (Wakiso District Data 2006). To put this in real terms, there are over 1,000 people per functioning well. Contaminants such as cholera, schistosomiasis, amoebic dysentery, other water borne diseases and animal and environmental waste products are known to pollute many unprotected water sources. These infections especially pillage sub-county and district residents during the rainy season when flooding causes severe contamination. Due to the lack of prohibitive barriers, people share these undeveloped water sources with animals. Animal waste mixes with the water further reducing its quality. Human waste similarly mixes with the water due to the fact that most depend on undeveloped water sources and that few families living in the villages have toilets in good repair. Aside from the problem of contamination, collecting water from undeveloped springs and other water holes can be dangerous because people generally perch on wet logs over the water to fill their jerry cans. For community members who are generally very poor it is not an option to hire transportation to travel to the few developed wells in their area or to miss an entire day of work to walk to fetch water from the nearest developed well. (in the photo a child collects water from one of KACCAD's wells built in 2007.)
T
he High percentage of HIV/AIDS and other disease in
Wakiso District is blessed with plenty of natural springs. These bubble up from the ground and feed small ponds. Due to their abundance, reliability and the high water quality, spring wells are common in Wakiso District. They have proven to be most economical, sustainable and long lasting of all wells constructed in our area. It is upon this background that KACCAD seeks support for spring well development for wells in Wakiso District of Uganda.
Since July 2007 KACCAD has developed 13 spring wells in Wakiso District. Community members have show tremendous support for spring well development forming work and maintenance comities and assisting with site clearance and building. Women, children and men work together to completer wells. Community support both makes these projects possible and shows that they are sustainable as beneficiaries demonstrate their commitment through their work.
KACCAD will wor
k with community members and our team of technical builders to complete manual labour for each spring. We will be the intermediaries between your group and the community providing you with photos and a final report of completion. A well sponsored by your community group will be engraved as you wish. We also invite you to visit and help with construction along with beneficiary community members. (Community members work together to build a well in Kikaaya, Wakiso District.)
The community receiving the well will be responsible for well maintenance. They will maintain work crews for cleaning and other maintenance. Residents will receive training from Wakiso District on how to maintain their well. An advantage of spring wells is that repair and maintenance costs are usually low and can thus be met by beneficiary communities. KACCAD will work with communities and the district to cover major repairs.
With the avid support of community members and leaders all wells built by KACCAD have been completed in two to two and a half weeks from the starting date of site clearance. We are able to build more than one well at a time using hired technical labor and with support from recipient community members. A well built with your support will be completed in no more than three weeks unless weather conditions prohibit speedy completion. A report on the success of the project will be submitted to your group via email within a month of completion.
To construct a spring well it costs $1,900 dollars. This money goes to pay for materials, technical labor and for KACCAD’s work organizing and overseeing the project. To break this down, we can build a spring well that will serve approximately 845 people with 38 donations of $50 or 19 donations of $100. In the
Monday, January 7, 2008
Letter from KACCAD Team-Oct-Dec Newsletter
From our office in
We started our home visit program in partnership with Bbiira AIDS Community in September 2007. This is the first program that we were able to start as result of support from Real Uganda/Global Volunteer Network volunteers. This program, focused on serving people living with/affected by HIV/AIDS, is lead by KACCAD staff members Sam Musisi and Nicholas Ssekiranda and temporary volunteers from Real Uganda. KACCAD teams with Bbiira AIDS
Community to identify needy families, assess their needs and provide basic assistance as available. Since September we have visited 45 families in
At present we are working on a project to expand this program, a group chicken rearing income generation activity that will support seven families. We received funding for the chicken rearing project from the With God’s Little Ones (an American-based organization that operates internationally), two of our Real Uganda volunteers, Maheen Merchant and Sofia Graflund, and from Lee Miller of Port Townsend, WA in December 2007. With this support we will provide approximate 300 chickens, chicken housing, food and medicine to the seven families that will participate in the project. KACCAD will also facilitate training of beneficiaries in chicken rearing and business management and will oversee the project for the first year.
Over the year we have provided Voluntary HIV/AIDS Counseling and Testing (VCT) to 730 people through our partnership with
opening them. He visited wells in Nankuwadde, Kikaaya and Gogonya. These four wells as well as seven others were built in the last four months with donations from
We were very excited about this event and the number of spring wells built over the year. Towards the beginning of 2007 we made a work plan with the district in which we prioritized developing two spring wells over the year. At the time we made this plan KACCAD had only two full time staff. We were struggling to pay rent. From this background completing two spring wells was a huge dream. Our successful completion of 13 is more than six times what we hoped to do in the year and over what we imagined we could complete in five years! We are so thankful for all the support we have received to make this success possible.
Our partnership with Real Uganda has grown during 2007. We got our first volunteer from Real Uganda, a locally based NGO that partners with Global Volunteer Network (GVN) to provide volunteer opportunities to international volunteers, in July 2007. To date we have had six volunteers from Real Uganda. Sarah Riley and Brittany Walsh of the
Tori Fraser is a volunteer from
five schools, Mercy Home, for boy and girl scouts, youth groups, women’s groups and people attending Voluntary HIV/AIDS Counseling and Testing Events. An estimated total of 600 vocational and secondary students, 130 OVC’s from Mercy Home, 80 women from three women’s groups, and 996 people at VCT events have received sensitization from KACCAD volunteers. In total an estimated 1,806 people have received sensitization for KACCAD volunteers over the year. Topics of focus have included HIV/AIDS, gender roles, early pregnancy and family planning, reproduction, body changes in youth, menstruation, communication and many other topics. In 2008 we will continue working with most of these and other groups providing sensitization.
· $19,500 for spring well development
· Just over $3,400 for income generation activities (starting two chicken rearing projects)
· $8,059 for OVC school sponsorship (50 students)
· $500 for a New Years event and food give away for OVCs
· $500 for home repairs of a needy family in Bulenga
· $300 for the home visit program + in-kind donations mentioned above.
· $100 for the Life Skills/HIV/AIDS Awareness Program
· $2,193 for administrative support (rent, office supplies and internet set up)
new hope to the pig project. This is one of the projects that we are prioritizing for further developing in 2008. KACCAD is currently renting most of the pig farm but looks forward to repairing the stalls, getting more pigs and starting our own chicken rearing project for income generation to build organization sustainability. Other things we plan on working on over this next year include strengthening partnerships and establishment of an income generation project, improving our office technology with new equipment and tech support, building more spring wells and strengthening our volunteer program.
KACCAD Team
Friday, January 4, 2008
KACCAD Has a Blog!
We are really exited to be able to stay in better touch with you through our blog. For those of you who want more information about KACCAD check out our website: www.volunteerkaccad.org. Check out our blog for current news about KACCAD, to see our photos and to stay in touch. Enjoy!
The KACCAD Team


