Hi Friends greetings and thanks for the continued support to kyarumba community.

As you may have noted we have restructured our interventions to be able to contribute to women's empowerment. We have been working off line with megan and the Bwimaniro women's Club consulting the community to understand better the problems and also to come up with appropriate solutions to solve these problems.

now the BDF has been formed to spearhead the whole process. we have already developed a concept paper for our startup activities as well as a constitution that is helping us to register the organisation.

please look through these documents in the resources section for your input and comments

Thanks and kind regards

Jessica

Hallo Jessica, hallo Megan,

First of all congratulations on restructuring the whole project. I think this was necessary in order to reinvent somehow a focus for the project, since the practical donation constraints (account in Uganda etc) could not be lifted at present.

Megan all the best to your task as a Facilitator - I believe this is the ideal choice for Jessica, as you are situated in Uganda yourself and you are able to work together.

As Jessica knows I am now pregnant and attending a full time seminar till the end of March but I hope I can find time nnow and then to contribute. I thought of starting with reviewing the start-up activities of the BDF. Just to make sure that I read right documents, there are two files I think under Resources with the name "Concept....". Should I have a look at both of them?

Best regards,
Eleftheria

Hello Eleftheria,
Greetings and welcome back to the village discussions.

Yes I think restructuring the project was very neccessary, and we are really working hard on this.

download only one copy of the concept, it was uploaded twice

Thanks and please do take care of your self very well

Good time
Jessica

Dear Friends,

I feel good when I see you click to visit us here. we are looking forward to your comments on the proposed new move.

I know you must be very busy, but spare some time and give us a word of visdom on what we have proposed in the constitution and the startup activities.

We consider you as very important stakeholders in our work and your involvement will make us proud, and energise us more.

We look forward to hearing from you

Jessica

Hi!

Jessica, thanks for the invite to join you!

I have been reading the various docs. Slight confusion as there are two Concept Paper docs stored in Resources, and one of them links to another copy of the Constitution! Is it possible t delete that to avoid confusion?

Its kind of difficult for me to comment as I am not used to projects on the kind of large scale that you are planning, but I will write what occurred to me...

Firstly, am very happy to see a group focusing on women's development as I know that women are often bottom of the pile when it comes to education, income etc.

I can see that you have a huge variety of needs in the area - education, health, agriculture. Are you going to try and split this down into several small projects that can be done independently of each other? Can you set priorities on these? It will be a lot easier for you to plan a few things at a time, also easier to raise money for small projects (unless you have already got some fairly sure sources of large-scale funding)

In some ways you are at the same stage as another Nabuur village, Kyomya - http://www.nabuur.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=261
They also have a wide range of needs in their community, similar to Kyarumba, and are working out what to do first. They aim to split the whole big problem down into many small projects, focusing on one thing at a time, and trying to do things which are relatively low cost. As far as I am aware they are a local organisation, just focused on development in one place. Am thinking you may be able to share ideas?

One of their focus areas is improving agriculture - something you want to do in Kyarumba too - and they have a neigbour called Ken who has experience in simple organic techniques which require little or no cost to set up. He has already passed these on to several other villages and says things are going well. Has produced a DVD to explain how to do things. Maybe he will send you a copy if you ask, and if you have people who will be interested in using it.

On the subject of health, also check out the info on the VIP programme posted on Kyomya. It may be that Kyarumba can get involved in this too. If you are interested, email Raul about it - I know he is collecting information from several other villages too.

With the large-scale research you want to do, is there any chance of partnering with a group that already has experience of doing this and that a lot of it can be done by volunteers? Maybe working with a local university who can do this work as part of a relevant course? What can you learn from other groups across the country that have done similar things?

I would say start small, don't try and do everything at once, grow slowly over time...

Mary

Hi Mary,

Thanks for your comments; Megan will delete the second concept paper.

About the planned poverty study,

we have been privileged by the proposed study by the district which will cover kyarumba as well. so I think the research costs seize to be relevant in our startup costs.

about our project being large scale, well we are not going to have a large scale programme, the objectives in the BDF write up are what we will exit for but we will not tackle all at a go. At the moment we are focusing on economic empowerment on a small scale.
The problems are huge but we can not tackle all of them. OUR economic empowerment project is focusing on agriculture, so the skills in organic farming will be required. We will linkup accordingly for more information.

For now we are not looking at health. When we are ready we will linkup with kyomwa for more information.

Thanks
Jessica

Hi Jessica

So the local district authorities are intending to do the survey themselves, then share the results with you and other organisations working in the area? If so, that is good news as it means you will be able to use the information without having to pay for the survey.

When I read the documents I had assumed you were wanting to do everything at once. Its good to hear that you are splitting into small more manageable steps and starting slowly.

That means everyone can gain experience, also that the local people should start to see benefits relavively quickly. And succeeding with something small will give them confidence and belief that things really can get better, that they really do have the power to change things. It will encourage them to be actively involved with you and come up with more ideas of their own.

Mary

Hi Mary,
Thanks for the response, yes the district is actaully going to work closely with the CSOs to conduct the poverty study. so all CSOs will access the results.

We are keeping our fingures crossed

Have a lovely day
Jessica

Hi All,

Thank you for reviewing the activities of the Bwimaniro Development Foundation, Much as I did not get fedback from most of you on the new move we have made, I did get valuable response and advice through email.

Our mission was to introduce to you the new move for strengthening our response.

Results for the actions
1. submitted two proposals to donors waiting for response
2. Working on partnerships with International Contact Uganda and Fairground Foundation both from the neitherlands who are linking us to volunteers to come and work with us in Kyarumba. ICU has already visited Kyarumba and are excited about partnership with us.
3. We are finalising registration of the foundation in Uganda.
4. Startup costs for the foundation have been integrated in the pilot proposals we have submitted to the donor in addition to managing with our own resources.

Thank you for being there for us,We will therefore close most of the actions open and begin very interesting ones very soon.

Thanks
Jessica

Thank You