12th October, 2011
A team of eight from the Guardian news organisation in London
travelled to Katine, Uganda, this week to catch up on the work AMREF has
been doing in the sub-county and to discuss proposals for the future.
Among the team were Liz Ford, Deputy Editor and Jo Confino, an executive editor at the Guardian.
Liz Ford, previously editor of the Guardian Katine writes.
Both of us have visited Katine several times during the course of
the four-year project and have seen first hand the many changes that have
taken place. This trip was a chance for us to talk about AMREF's plans for
the next two years as it scales down its operation in the sub-county.
AMREF's aim for the next two years will be to support and strengthen
community groups and committees that it has helped established and trained
during the course of the project, and to ensure they are firmly embedded
into existing local government structures. As Katine project manager, Edward
Ssebuyira, told stakeholders, the next two years will be about "software"
not "hardware".
Alongside this support, we spoke to AMREF about plans for a £60,000 legacy
fund to allow villagers not already in village savings and loans association
the chance to borrow small amounts of money to support business ventures and
livelihoods. Committees and community groups will be able to set up their
own VSLAs with around £300 from the fund. It has been proposed that the
interest made on these VSLAs each year will be put into an emergency
development fund, from which village groups, like the school management
committee at Obyarai primary school, can apply for grants to pay for
emergency work or repairs or meet a particular need.
We learned there are also plans to kit out the resource centre in Katine
with up to 12 new computers to create an ICT hub. Villagers can sign up for
three-month ICT courses, which include a one-month internship where people
can put what they have learned into practice. The programme is being funded
by US-based NGO U-Touch, and the Guardian is donating £10,000 to the
project.
Over the past four years, developments in Katine have been watched closely
by people around the world. Although the Guardian's full-time coverage of
the project ended last year, we are continuing to monitor progress on our
new Global development website
www.guardian.co.uk/globaldevelopent/series/return-to-Katine<http://www.guardian.co.uk/globaldevelopent/series/returntoKatine
AMREF's plans for the next few years sound exciting and we hope they will
provide a strong foundation from which villagers can build when AMREF
finally withdraws. We are looking forward to watching developments.
Guardian Twitter Updates
The rest of the Guardian team were visiting Katine after winning a
competition run by the news organisation. During our time here, we have all
been using Twitter to share our experiences and we will be live blogging
with the AMREF team from the resource centre on Wednesday [12 Oct]
afternoon, answering questions the public has about the project.
Read some of their twits here
http://twitter.com/#!/LizFordGuardian
http://twitter.com/#!/joconfino
Follow AMREF’s twitter here http://twitter.com/#!/AMREF_Worldwide
