BOSCO Uganda

Happy International Women's Day

2011-03-10T01:02:00.003+03:00

This International Women's Day, it is a pleasure to greet the women volunteers of the BOSCO network. Inspired by you, may we work together with partners like FITE to bring about a more peaceful and joy-filled world.

Arch Bishop John Baptist Odama speech at the Breaking Borders Award

2010-05-12T14:11:00.000+03:00

Progress in mapping water sources

2010-03-27T04:05:00.004+03:00

Jokondino Okema of Pagak, working with students from Lacor, has begun to implement the water source mapping project. Each of the points on the map contains the results of a proof-of-concept water quality test, and a hyperlink to images and additional information about the water source. Students and teachers use GPS units to obtain longitude and latitude information. The location and water quality data are entered into a Google form embedded in a wiki page, which is automatically mapped each evening through mapalist.com. This technology is teacher-friendly: the hope is that teachers will be able to create their own mapping projects using this same technology.

BOSCO heading to World Bank Innovation Fair!

2010-03-22T13:43:00.002+03:00

As partners of Voices of Africa, who recently won the World Bank Innovation Fair challenge, we will be heading to South Africa (albeit virtually) to mingle with other ICT/ICT4D experts!

building ICT+ programs.

2010-03-18T13:25:00.004+03:00

Over at Project Diaspora, TMS Ruge responds to challenges from OLPC. A lot of what he says in this post makes me think of BOSCO-Uganda (as it is now and also where we want to see it go). I think a central question to the OLPC debate, as well as to the rampant spread of telecenters, is: "How do we provide technology while also offering value-add training that teaches a responsible and engaging use of technology over and above the basics?" Read more here.

BOSCO USA field visit: implementing teacher exchange.

2010-03-18T08:49:00.006+03:00

Members of the Board of Directors of BOSCO-USA have spent the past week visiting BOSCO-Uganda projects. One of the main purposes of this visit was to introduce a new program called Classroom to Classroom Collaboration (C2C). Basically, science teachers in the USA and teachers in Uganda work together to collaboratively teach their students about data-gathering and analysis.

In order to generate content for the program, partner schools in the USA have raised funding for GPS and other equipment to test and track water sources in Pabo Secondary School, Lacor Secondary School, Lacor Primary Seven, and Pagak Primary School. The GPS unit is used to map the location of the water source on Google Maps, followed by testing. Results are posted on BOSCO's wikispace.

Funding for GPS equipment was kindly raised and provided by Robin Dirksen, a science teacher at Lead-Deadwood High School in South Dakota.

Here are some great photos from our trusty photographer, Justin, who was visiting with his father Tom Loughran, BOSCO-USA Board Member.

New Beginnings

2010-03-05T05:59:00.002+03:00

It looks like I have some very big shoes to fill. The Bye Bye Bailey post made me realize how much Kevin has contributed over the years and become a part of the family. I hope I can offer a smalll slice of what he has!

I will join the BOSCO team in mid-March. With skills primarily rooted in journalism and communications, I look forward to building BOSCO's reputation and scope, as well as helping partner centers spread the word about their work.

More information on myself can be found on my blog and website. Kevin has been beyond helpful in helping me prepare and I can't wait to hit the ground running!

BYE BYE BAILEY

2010-03-02T17:32:00.000+03:00

BYE- BYE BAILEY

The time now is 1.15am .I have been on my bed, for the last 3hrs and there is no sign of sleep in my eyes. My only companion is my thoughts of your absence in the team and what the first day in office without you meant, so I chose to write this tribute.

Today, I arrived at office late by 8:45am.I received a rude welcome with an empty table with a plastic chair on my right hand side. The silence was unique in office. In Africa, there is a myth that whenever there was such silence, children were told God had been amidst them.

Before I could sit down, there was a call from the VOiP Phone in office, you helped installed. I t was a caller from Choo Pe(a place with no men).One of your students was finding out whether you would be turning up for training. Relaying the message that you left for the US and may never return any more was like breaking the silence of death of a loved on. His voice was full of excitement and anxiety looking forward to learning more.

As I came to terms with the reality of your absence; the tables were set ready for our usual Monday weekly meetings. There was one empty chair around the round meeting table. Stella had forgotten you had left us. I then remembered your last prayer at the meeting, a true reminiscence of Alfred’s famous prayer. The joy and excitement you brought to the team had gone with you. ``Is this what it means to miss a loved one?” were my thoughts. Surely, two years is such a short time.

After the meeting it all dawned on me that your friends in the nearby village who visited the CTC often might never show up at the gate any more. Your good friend the young catechist you trained to use computer and enjoy internet might never sit at the verandah again enjoying the worlds best creation, leave alone see you any more. The thought of moving back home to inform the neighbors that you had left and might not be back to see them and their children or enjoy their food given to you whole heartedly, just like the parable of the poor woman who offered the only coin she had as compared to the rich; its all she had just like its all this poor women could offer you for a meal and were excited you enjoyed it. I was filled with a mixture of emotion and gratitude that you are ready for a new life with clear knowledge of poverty and pain, suffering and salvation, and failure and faith. Surely, Stephen was heart broken they didn’t say Bye neither did the villagers bid you fare well. Yet, they were convinced it was mountains that don’t meet but people do, some day they hope to see you again.

Kevin, tomorrow I will be traveling to Pabo alone. The normal diet of dust from the trucks and Buses are all left but to myself. This is a plate I duely enjoyed sharing with you. The paths and pot holes may never see you again let alone a broken bike by the roadside as darkness sets in. Its imaginable to think you left the superb City Highways, storied shopping malls, classic restaurants full of Italian, Chinese and Mexican foods and came down here for our dusty road side chapatti, pot hole ridden roads and windowless rooms instead of the air conditioned rooms at home. More soul searching is that all this is for the Africans to leave a better life than your ancestors made it. What we will never forget is that during the word economic melt down; there were still fresh graduates of Notre Dame University keeping the virtue of voluntary service and service above self. For we who believe, blessed are the poor, blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who heal the sick for the kingdom of God is theirs; we are convinced that your life is blessed.

On Saturday, I hope to show up at Boma to commemorate our Saturday culture of reading and watching CNN whenever you were home sick.

The Acholi have a saying; ‘its better to serve you greens (food for the poor) better than serving you meat (food for the rich) yet they don’t own it. It could be stolen or got through deceit. As for us in BOSCO UGANDA, your send off was a mild one, yet a true reflection of our feelings for you. I have lived with Fr. Joseph for almost two decades, yet I have never seen him dance, he did it all for you. This time Sister Betty endured the cold around the fire place and it was all for you. In your parcel is an art piece of an Elephant, a symbol of the Acholi people. Please place it where you have your sight on before you sleep and when you wake up. Never forget us, Elephants are known for good memory and physical strength. May this strength be in your spirit and determination to make the world a better place than you found it.

I want to say welcome back to Africa, yet I haven’t forgotten your grandmother asking you to come back home, your friends poking you to drop the African dream to live the American dream and above all the meaning of your absence to your immediate family and the first Christmas without you in decades. That’s why some day, we hope you will be remembered with an African Bailey, names have meaning in Africa, your life and time in Africa had great meaning hence, worth the naming. We miss you and love you like we were born of the same womb.

God bless you and your family

Aliker David Martin

Project Coordinator

Bosco Uganda

256-772865866

Skype: aliker.david.martin

Unicef Madagascar visits BOSCO to learn how to replicate our success in rural connectivity

2010-02-24T14:49:00.000+03:00

BOSCO hosted staff from Unicef Madagascar today who were on a visit to assess rural connectivity solutions that are being implemented in Uganda in hopes of replicating these solutions back in Madagascar. BOSCO connects schools, community centers, health clinics, and CBO/NGO outstations in rural areas to a network of high speed Internet that is transmitted via long-range WiFi. We also implement the use of solar panels to power low-power PCs at each of our sites.

Unicef Madagascar hopes to return to Madagascar and implement some of the same rural connectivity solutions that are already underway in BOSCO's network. BOSCO is continuing to work with Unicef Uganda to finalize a 2-year partnership that will allow BOSCO to double its network presence across northern Uganda, including entering Kitgum and Pader Districts to the East. BOSCO is proud to work in partnership with multinational organizations like Unicef who have the capacity to take best practices in rural connectivity and make them widely available in new locations.

BOSCO Project Coordinator David Aliker

introduces the Unicef Madagascar

staff to youth at Pagak ICT Center

Blog posting by email

2010-02-19T17:56:00.002+03:00

Hi, all. I'm Tom Loughran, a science educator from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, USA. I've been involved in the BOSCO project for the past four years, but haven't yet been to Northern Uganda. I'm heading to Gulu shortly, and want to be able to post updates from that trip. So I've enabled an email address for posting text and pictures by email. This is a test of that system. There are good reasons to be able to email pictures and text to a blog: that blog has followers; it is embedded in various sites by rss feeds; and it is publicly searchable as a blog post. So emailing a story to the bosco-uganda blog is a great way to communicate with a lot more people than you might think to include in an email. More to come soon!

Unicef helping BOSCO to monitor site progress

2010-02-11T17:55:00.000+03:00

David Aliker and Stella Akiteng, both Project Coordinators for BOSCO-Uganda, accompanied Unicef representatives from the Gulu zonal office to visit a number of our BOSCO sites today, including, Lacor, Pagak, Pabo, Coope, and Unyama (see our site map here).

We are just winding up our smale scale funding project with Unicef. Most of the project was geared toward adding a few new sites to our network and implementing, for the first time, our grass-roots Web 2.0 training program at each site. In this program, youth at each site learn to train each other to use valuable collaboration tools on the web, including: email, Wikispaces, blogging, and other social media.

David Aliker and BOSCO volunteer Jokondino Okema

demonstrate how they use their mobile solar panel to Unicef staff

BOSCO's first ever Web 2.0 Training Workshop

2010-01-27T09:28:00.001+03:00

This week, BOSCO is hosting our first ever Web 2.0 training workshop, on site at our office in the Catechists Training Center, Gulu. We are hosting 16 young men and women representing 8 of our rural sites (see site locations here).

They are going to be focusing on learning collaborative, web based applications like Wikispaces, Google Docs, and other social media applications. Our users have already learned how to create their own blogs. You can see their work here.

Upon completion of the workshop these users will return to their rural based ICT sites and will be the primary peer trainers, initiating the Train the Trainer process.

2010-01-05T23:37:00.001+03:00

Please take 30 seconds to vote for BOSCO, a finalist for a $20K Better World Books' Readers Choice Literacy Grant: http://www.betterworldbooks.com/voting.aspx. Vote by Jan 20th! Thanks to Paul Miller at Better World Books for alerting BOSCO to this opportunity!

BOSCO doubles its bandwidth!

2009-12-09T11:36:00.003+03:00

With the arrival of the SEACOM fiber optic cable late this year, many cities across Kenya, Uganda and the East African region experienced higher speed Internet connections at reduced costs. The cable landed on the coast, in Mombasa, Kenya and slowly made its way toward Kampala, Uganda.

Using a local ISP, Uganda Telecom, we received notice that the effects of the SEACOM cable's arrival in Uganda has finally increased the bandwidth we are receiving in Gulu. We were previously using an 256 kbps connection and now we are running at 512 kbps for the same price we were previously paying at 256 kbps.

BOSCO in the news

2009-11-24T12:09:00.001+03:00

See a recent article highlighting BOSCO's work in THIS Magazine: http://this.org/blog/2009/11/20/bosco-uganda-ict4d/

An update from Pagak

2009-11-18T12:34:00.002+03:00

Click here for an update from Pagak by Chrisopher, director of an agricultural movement in the region and also a BOSCO Web 2.0 training volunteer. As the IDP camps close down, people are reconstructing their lives in their home villages and are once again accessing the land that provides their livelihoods through farming.

New BOSCO sites online

2009-11-11T12:44:00.003+03:00

The newest BOSCO sites to come online in the last two weeks include: St. Jude's Orphanage and school (near the Catechists Training Center in Gulu); Lacor Seminary (secondary school for young seminarians); Lacor Primary School (where BOSCO volunteer trainer Jokondino teaches, featured here); and finally, Pabo Secondary school (Government run school) which complements the already connected Pabo Comprehensive Secondary School (Catholic school).

-BOSCO Gulu team

Unicef visiting Bosco sites

2009-10-27T09:36:00.003+03:00

Representatives from Unicef (United Nations Children's Fund) will be visiting the Bosco office in Gulu today and one of our sites in Pagak. For the past number of months Unicef has been helping Bosco to fund some community training initiatives which are documented here.

Bosco is putting together a proposal with Unicef to help expand the network to a number of new sites in the Acholi subregion while also expanding on the effectiveness of our collaborative training efforts in linking local schools, health clinics, NGOs and CBOs and local government offices to our network of solar powered PCs and Internet.

Update

2009-10-07T20:35:00.001+03:00

I have been carrying out mobilization for training in Pabo (former IDP camp) today. The good and bad news is about one hundred people showed up on a market day; that was the highest attendance yet for a BOSCO training since the return and resettlement process started. Yet there is only one computer in Pabo Comprehensive Secondary School so we are unable with our current capacity to serve that many people at one time. Even a few distant schools sent members asking to be considered for computer training. The training brought regular lessons in the school to a stop as the teachers didn’t want to miss out either.

The school’s management is of the opinion that their school should get connected since they have two generators—big and small—which is conducive to accommodate the equipments. Solar power is also available here, but is only enough to power 2 PCs.

So far in Pabo Secondary School 16 teachers are registered for training with BOSCO. Unicef is pushing for monitored training and their representative, Richard, is meeting me tomorrow afternoon.

At the Coope community site, there has been a change of leadership: Latifa Monica is now the site Manager and a new structure has been developed. The land lord is yet to meet me and when we do we will sign the Rent agreement so as to open the room, hopefully by tomorrow. In Coope the volunteers are out to mobilize to begin formal training as well.

-David Aliker
BOSCO-Uganda Project Coordinator

A Wikispaces bounce

2009-10-01T02:44:00.002+03:00

Wikispaces was kind enough to profile the BOSCO wikispace on their monthly newsletter earlier this week. As you can see from the graph above, the release of that profile on Monday 9/28 coincided with a sizeable increase in visits to the site.

As we learn to get stories and proposals posted more frequently, we can help reduce the harmful isolation afflicting Northern Uganda by getting the word out ourselves.

We recently added an AddThis button --like this one:
--to the BOSCO wikispace, inviting the sharing of new posts in various social networking settings. This is an opportunity for all of us visiting the site to encourage others to visit. As the number of visitors grows, so does the incentive for members to post new content. Let's work at imparting energy to this cycle. Isolation is a bad thing; sharing is good:)

A note from the President of BOSCO (USA)

2009-09-28T18:28:00.000+03:00

Bosco is committed to the mission of overcoming the isolation suffered by the people of Northern Uganda.

I am deeply grateful and encouraged by the manner of cooperation between The Archdiocese of Gulu, Horizont3000 and Unicef. Bosco USA stands ready to collaborate by sharing technical expertise and the search for resources to continue further deployments to the areas not yet connected to our system.We also are building communities through Web2.0 collaboration. These communities already participate in peacebuilding and development.The expansion of Bosco will further expand the reach of these communities.

-Gus Zuehlke, president Bosco USA

UNICEF now supporting BOSCOUganda

2009-09-27T13:41:00.005+03:00

BOSCOUganda and UNICEF have signed a funding agreement focusing on the further expansion of the ICT activities in Northern Uganda.

The project “Connecting Rural Youth – ICT for Participatory Development” is designed for a period of 7 months, beginning in August 2009. Its helps BOSCOUganda to further foster and intensify its computer and internet related activities for rural communities.

The project objective reads as follows:
“Creating access to information and communication technologies to girls and boys in and out of school in order for them to share experiences with other young people in Northern Uganda and the world and access international databases and information to increase their knowledge and enhance their learning so that they can participate in the proposed youth forum for the 2010 African Union Summit in Uganda while expanding their opportunities to engage in the future development of their region and country.”

More computer trainings for rural youth
Through the funding of UNICEF, BOSCOUganda can now start enhanced trainings for the computer users, especially for the young people in the rural ICT centers. Furthermore the project will involve a total of 8 sites who will be fully connected to the wireless internet network, equipped with computers and solar power, and participate in the Web2.0 training programme.

BOSCOUganda proofs its reliability
“The new partnership with UNICEF has proven our reliability and shows that we are ready to cooperate with international organizations”, says Fr. Joseph Okumu, Executive Director of BOSCOUganda. It’s a great success for BOSCOUganda and also a strong signal towards the quality of the work of the organization in ICT for rural communities – and hopefully just the first step of more support and partnerships coming up in the future.

Partnership HORIZONT3000 and BOSCOUganda continues

2009-09-27T12:34:00.019+03:00

It all started early 2007 when a civil servant from Austria was sent to Gulu through HORIZONT3000 in order to support BOSCOUganda and the rural ICT project.

Origins
At that time the first phase of the wireless internet – solar power – computer installations in rural Northern Uganda was almost done. People in several displacement camps started using the new technologies to get in contact with the outside world and read newspapers through the internet. But it was also clear that more local support for maintenance and training was necessary in order to make that great idea of ICT in Northern Uganda a success in the long run.

HORIZONT3000 is the biggest Austrian Non-Governmental Organisation for Development Co-Operation, working in Uganda, Kenia, Tansania – and several other countries around the globe. Its main strategic areas include rural development as well as peace building and conflict transformation. And beside financial support to local organizations, HORIZONT3000 is running a personnel program – providing technical advisors and consultants to support capacity building of their partner organizations.

BOSCOUganda has become one of the most successful partners of the capacity building program of HORIZONT3000 in Uganda.

Challenges
Although it started with a lot of challenges: When I came in as a Technical Advisor in 2008, there was still no real local structure, no staff beside the director Fr. Josef Okumu, no office, no transport, etc. My own “office“ was just a table and a chair at the veranda of the CTC Guest House in Gulu – nothing else. And it became worse: In August 2008 one of the main towers through which the project was connecting the rural internet centers, was bought up by a telecom company and could not be used from BOSCOUganda anymore. And as if that wouldn´t have been enough already, the main server in Gulu got hit through lightning as well – the whole internet connection to the rural sites was cut off.

Progress
But since then a lot has changed:

the whole internet network has been build up again and expanded to new locations,
the organizational structure of BOSCO in Uganda has been defined,
the organization is now operating with 5 local employees who are officially contracted by the Gulu Archdiocese,
a Strategic Plan has been developed, defining the way forward for the next years,
BOSCO has got a fully equipped office,
new partnerships have been established,
an accountability system has been developed providing regular update of the organizations financial status,
a local technician has been trained and is already doing further wireless installations on its own,
and so on…

HORIZONT3000 will continue supporting BOSCOUganda at least until the end of 2010. The Advisory Programme of HORIZONT3000 always focuses on strengthening local structures and training their staff. Our success is defined by the level of external support needed by our local partners: The more independent a local organsation can operate, and the less personnel support they need from outside – the more successful is our own work.

And BOSCOUganda is on its best way to proof being a success story of our advisory programme.

Stefan Bock
HORIZONT3000 – Austrian Organisation for Development Co-Operation
Technical Advisor of BOSCOUganda
www.horizont3000.at

BOSCOUganda and War Child Holland Partnership

2009-06-11T15:30:00.003+03:00

BOSCO-Uganda and War Child Holland are partnering in Pagak (former IDP camp) site to establish a joint ICT training and education center.

Today a community meeting was held (see photo on left) where a structure and leadership team was established by the community. Mr Jokondino Okema was elected "Site Administrator" by his fellow community members at Pagak. About 30 community members attended the meeting. Jokondino was previously the site manager for Pagak at the BOSCO site within Pagak Primary School.

The new joint site will offer wireless Internet and PCs powered by solar. There is no electrical grid power in Pagak. Also, there will be a number of laptop PCs provided for users to train on.

-Kevin Bailey

DESPERATE DREAMS AT NOON

2009-03-30T10:14:00.002+03:00

DESPERATE DREAMS AT NOON
It was noon, the sun was extra bright and bitingly hot that which makes a European turn pink, the wind was strong like it could lift a crawling baby. Seated next to me was my eldest brother Richard, on my right was my mother freshly widowed and opposite where I sat was Moses a brother I followed not only in birth but most of the ways of growing adolescent boys. Rays of sun light passed through gaps of the main door to the sitting room with clear images of an aging door. Then there was this puzzling silence that was reminiscent of our last family meeting after burying my Dad only for the hissing beans being fried some distance away by my eldest Sister and the aroma of the dreadful K20 beans I have eaten for a good part of my life. I could tell because a mourner had offered a sack of it during burial to support the struggling family in grieve after burial.
Richard then cleared his voice so heavy with spittle of anger and bitterness to start the meeting. I could tell I was about to be told some sad news. My mind synchronised itself really fast but could not identify the subject of bitterness but my mothers face said it all. I then realised Richard sat on my fathers seat in a manner that he always sat before addressing us as we got back to school. He then continued,
“We have called you here to discuss your studies, we all know you have passed to the University but since government only pays for 4000 students we are here to see how you can pursue your dreams”
Talking of my dreams I could not withhold a smile but this was short lived by facts about the family’s status.
He continued “all of us know of your childhood dream to be a lawyer, we also know Dad promised you he would rather walk naked than see you fail to be a lawyer because poverty has been inscribed on his back for all to see but now he is no more and we have to move on. We have discussed and agreed that due to financial constrain the nearest and affordable institutions and where our late Dad at least had friends are Unyama National Teachers College about 500km away from here or Aduku Uganda Chamber of Commerce, so that in difficult times they can be there to support. You only take two years to complete your diploma and you will be here to support Mum. For Unyama you can walk that distance and with Aduku, missing requirements can be sent easily later on. What do you have to say?”
I sat back quietly in deep thought of the time, energy and hard work I put to become a lawyer and now fate seems determined to define my destiny. In the eyes of my mind, I could see my fathers face brimming in joy looking at my end of term results and calling me learned friend suddenly I felt my heart sink deeply to the bottom of my stomach with bitterness as if I had taken local herbs in my culture for reconciliation (Mato Oput) as I cursed death and poverty that looked like twin brothers and complement each other. In a blink of an eye, I saw mums shoe had slanted and taken the shape of one suffering from polio, she had barely worn any new dress over time and she was looking older than her real age then my words came to haunt me, words said decades ago to my teacher of English Edward and it was much more audible in my mind in the silence;
Edward had a canvas shoe he loved so much, little did I know that it was not love for the shoe but poverty dictating terms to my teacher whom we referred to as “Master”, he had visited the cobbler so many times and the shoe had taken a different shape and now looking like Mums and his I nicknamed it helicopter and it became his name to which he got to know and now it looks like he cursed me to the same profession where helicopters were fashionable and stylish.
Again, my memory flashed on the day I told our new young and beautiful teacher who taught Divinity and the topic was CHOICES OF MARRIAGE PARTNERS and with intent to pull her legs I raised up my hands and the sad words came out of my mouth;
Marry a teacher for she can not ask for what she can not get and this sent the whole class laughing and in anger she left the class. Now I am to face the same students who are as wild as I was or even worse.
In tears, I declared I would not take any of that and can not go for anything less than Law at the University, I told them our literature discussion group all made it and will go for Bachelor of Law I just can’t take anything less, above all a diploma in education is what not even in my life’s worst nightmares did it ever future in my dreams and now all you are saying looks like am having a bad night mare at noon.
Mum then chipped in, “My son, I am a widow left with equal number of my children as dependants from the extended family what do you want me to do? I have lived to see the poverty in this house from the time my breast had never suckled to now that my long beautiful hair that attracted your father has turned grey and I never turned back but now I feel weak and unable please understand our situation” with tears dropping down her cheek as she continued, “We can not send these dependants away for you to study because the little education your father had and made him meet me was sponsored by the extended family. You can still attain a diploma in education then personally pursue Law, what matters is not when you get there but how you get there. Your dream of being a lawyer was not only your dream but my dream as well. It will cost us five times more to study Law than to study education more so for five years, it’s a dream we are not blessed to have.”Dead silence ensured as Moses looked at me lost of what to say.
Moses in a slightly tough and authoritative voice then called me with my sir name “Aliker, the culture of death in our clan is that its abrupt and painful because it comes with responsibility and it never leaves one the same, it brings change, as you can see there is nothing we can do, as elderly boys to our remaining brothers, sister and step children you carry the responsibility like all of us here to make sure we give them an appropriate future, its what society will use to judge us in the future or else we all become a laughing stock to our graves. The hope of all these children are in us, there is need for us to sacrifice until it pains and most important in this trying moment for the family we need to unite, we can only be consulted but some one has to take decisions here, so like Richard said we have discussed and agreed that you go to any of this institutions and get back to support the young ones. Is there anybody with what to say?”
I then begged them to at least send me to Makerere University for any of the courses they can afford and pay the basics; I will fend for my self.
Richard then accepted without faith that, “We will try but should we fail don’t blame any body.”
The meeting ended and lunch was ready, I was so heart broken and a hopeless feeling filled me. My mind got saturated of good and bad thoughts. I excused my self not to take lunch not even my best dish of chicken could bring back my appetite I left for the boys’ bed room and thoughts resumed its dominance of my mind as tears rolled down my cheek. Lying on my bed starring at the roof my eyes came across a very old wall picture of Mary the mother of Jesus with a bleeding heart and suddenly some words came to my mind, “many are called but few are chosen” as these words were soothing my ego another Christian sentence cropped to my mind of the early days I used to take the church reading, it says “the lord is my Shepard there is nothing I shall want.”
These biblical allusions were very consoling and made me begin to look at fate optimistically. I reflected on the children I met in the internally displaced camps who did not have what to eat even when they had appetite and here I was with what to eat but no apetite, nothing to cover their nudity or where to lay their head and get good rest. I thought about the children who were denied their childhood, born in poverty natured in poverty and destined for poverty I felt lucky I could take decisions on my own but the fate of my fathers children could be like the children am reflecting on. Then I asked my self what is my mission in life? How can I get satisfaction in life?
I then saw my self as a responsible citizen and a parent with a small well managed family, so that I have more time for the children of my community, I saw my self inspiring many young ones with life full of values and I could see the respect and dignity in life I could achieve as a teacher. Its then that I coined a philosophy to guide me in pursuing my new dream “To spend the rest of my career building young peoples careers” Sleep then made me lay peacefully with a comical smile and a short sweat dream of students crowding around me in excitement as they consulted and called me “Master” Only to be woken up for super in the evening, using some humour and wit I teased worried Mum not to spoil a teachers good sleep just because of food, and all laughed really hard and their ribs arched in pain and guess what Mum had prepared the only remaining chicken for me to make me happy again.

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT OF EDUCATION AT MAKERERE UNIVERSITY
Mum picked her only bed sheets and half of the average amount of money needed for the university to include tution, feeding and accommodation and living allowance and handed it over to me and told me “My son try your luck You have our blessing” This was meant to be the first degree in the extended family from the Prestigious Makerere University one of Africa’s best Universities.
After staying at a family friends place for two days I realised I was not the only struggling student and poor students from north and eastern Uganda resided in a nearby place call CHIKONI a.k.a CHIKS.With a few old boys I got easily integrated in to the ghetto of the University. For some one of my background it was easy to adopt, at least my difficulties were not written on my face and with an outstanding humorous and intuitive character, I easily got integrated and related well in my new found home. Every body was needy hence cooperation was by instinct and naturally we improvised our own type of fun that attracted even the financially stable who were referred to as MY LORD
My house was under a tree with the size of an extravagantly built toilet, trenches passed right in front and when it rained it washes sewerage, dustbin wastage and all types of dirt through the trench and it was normal. Our toilet that was shared by about 30households and because other houses did not have was left ever open becoming a public toilet as survival dictated in Chikoni.When you squat to use the toilet your knee protrudes past the door hence unable to close so it faced a wall for privacy. One could not stand up straight less his head touched the rusty dirty roof. The bathroom was extra dirty with mucous from spital, soap and dirt all over the wall. So one showered bending at the posture of one on parade standing at attention and it also served as the urinal just adjacent to the toilet. There was never any duty roster to clean it but depended on who wanted to use the sanitation next and how hygienically sensitive you were.
Necessity is the mother of invention but the father of crime, when it comes to feeding, my Chikoni inmates had a number of provisions;
First was to buy meal cards of the University from children of the rich at a “go away price” since they could afford meals from descent restaurants or buy them from dubious students who were either influential or had contact with University kitchen staff or those who had stolen them. At times you had to pay the University in charge who cross checks meal cards to avoid defaulters so that he assigns you a signal to use e.g. the American thumps up sign whenever you wereto receive a meal, if there are any changes then you miss meals that day. Some times those who sold out meal cards and are influential come first when its meat and by the time you reach that number has already been served so you miss. Others paid prostitutes, sluts and extremely poor single mothers who were inhabitants of the Ghetto to make sure they prepared any palatable food for survival for months ironically this characters were so honest and reliable since it was a way of making ends meet for them and could not quit their homes so that town was easily accessible for night missions. A few friends morally lost the struggle to HIV/AIDS there and sold their souls for a plate of soup. I had great friends both in the university and the nearby Mulago paramedical which hosted the hospital and where the medical students also did their practical, at the same time the paramedical hosted different medical diploma courses like pharmacy, orthopedics and laboratory technology. The few number of students at the paramedical as a government institute enabled them to always have enough to eat so whenever I ran out of cash I had to walk for 600m to have a meal I was so often there that other students thought I was part of them so much that I had developed confidence to move alone to the dinning to have food without my friends help. One day a student walked up to me and asked me why am not campaigning for a position in the institute because I carried my self like a leader not realising it’s because of deceit that am at their school.
Leadership is a calling and its divine in nature, it’s a gift that however much you run away from, you could find yourself racing towards it. One of the most vicious instructions I came with from home was to keep absolutely away from students’ politics, because it’s expensive, demands a lot of time needed for reading and very dangerous since people also die in the process. To me it was like convincing a dog to avoid bones. But the manner in which I was warned kept me quiet in the University up to my second year until events in my department made me break the silence.
The question of corruption, greed and fear of the biting fangs of poverty amongst those who taught us was affecting mostly the children of the poor especially those residing in Chikoni,We knew best the actual value of every coin we gave the University.
When we joined the University we inherited a problem between lecturers from faculty of Arts and that of School of Education, they were rivalling to have more lessons and since they are paid by the hour they spend with private sponsored students, it was worth fighting for and above all to claim credibility in the institute while School of Education lecturers felt those in faculty of Arts were not professional teachers and can not train students to become professionals since they were not. The Dean faculty of Arts and School of Education had failed to resolve the issue and students had missed lecturers for almost two months so the student leaders decided to invite Administration for a meeting with affected students and it turned rowdy, when all were not allowed to speak, against the advice of friends who knew the potential of my speaking power and the potential of it bringing me problems, I raised my hands to be given an opportunity to speak, suddenly there was silence and surprise as the boy who had never said anything in class for two years now had ideas to solve such a complex issue. Energised by the pain of a peasant I gave a spectacular speech identifying the problem,diognising it and making prescription, by then students were already shouting at the top of their voices and I concluded by warning our leaders that if they can not solve the problem we are going to take charge. That was how the problem till today was solved.
It was from this speech that I got nominated for the president for the students’ leadership against my conscience, against my family’s will and against all odds. Students’ leadership were a very costly venture my living allowance then was less than $5, the ladies paid for my registration for the contest. After getting registered I moved back and addressed fellow course mates why I will turn down the offer to contest. I listed them as lack of funds, lack of interest, not residing in one of the halls which was a prerequisite for one to win, coming from the wrong tribe to win an election, not being able to speak the language of the area i.e. Luganda, not being known etc.It was then that I saw first hand the power of the poor mans revolution. Its then that I believed those who have less are more willing to give than those who have more for a reason. Including the lecturers whom I talked against, offered support to my surprise apart from a few who took hatred to another level like trying to clandestinely deny me my degree. For one to win an election of that level one needed funds for logistics,postors,dress code, presidential life style, and above all the looks.
Interestingly, volunteers whose names I don’t know up to now offered money, I didn’t even have a suit neither did I ever put it on one day in the University but volunteers offered suits which I accepted to borrow thou they were not classic but second hand suits(suits worn in the west then sold to Africa) turned out to be a sense of identity with the poor man’s course, a few old boys offered their parents vehicles to take me around.
I ran out of logistics yet my chances of winning were getting clearer desperately I asked for logistical support from Mum that she could offer, my mother wrote me the smallest and most painful letter of my life in which she said they missed a meal for the first time and asked me to make her proud amongst other women by attaining that degree and not even a coin was enclosed. I felt so low and had to hide from my agents for two days and my volunteers circulated information that I had been abducted by security men, only to come out of hiding and agree to the lie and concocted the abduction story, this made me so popular and won the election. Sometimes in life things move so fast that they get out of your control I regret the lie because I tried my best never to be deceitful in my campaigns and unfortunately got compromised to lie. I won because I was believed to be opposed to government who are responsible for our sorry state of education and poverty stricken life.
The elections costed millions of shillings, so much that it was more than my tuition fees in the tree years at University. As President School of Education I got a lot of priviledges, respect, allowances and opportunities for workshops that covered up nicely for my living expenses.
The quality of education also left a lot to be desired, and it was on this ticket that I wrote my manifesto, the congestion was more than an amalgamated Universal Primary Education class in the internally displaced camps, cheating of exams were ramphant,the rich bought exam from the secretaries and copy typist while the poor looked for the answers, thigh power was the most certain way of passing exams to female students, deceit and deception was the order of the day and those were my responsibilities in the country’s most prestigious manufacturing unit of teachers. The question then is why would a student teacher who has never been loved show love to his students when he has no ingridience of love, how would the teachers give what they don’t have and didn’t acquire in teacher College. Where was the professionalism supposed to come from when college leaders are not ethically professional in their duties? Acholi have a saying, “the behind legs of a cow follows the front legs.”
Certainly, Uganda needs a model Teacher College that does not rely on only performance, economic status and its survival but a College more perfected in values and aspirations of its citizens, with a well redesigned College curriculum that enhances one to realise its fullest of potential and produces inspirational characters to motivate and attract its students to the profession. It’s only then that the profession will realise the dignity and respect it deserves from both parents and students. This is exactly what the early missionaries did and that’s why there is a big difference between the post office box teachers and the dot.com teachers

REALISING THE DREAM

Every teacher tends to teach in the way he was taught is a philosophy I realised during my teaching practise. I never applied for a job in an economy where unemployment was as certain as darkness followed sunlight. With a good leadership track record in high school and University, my former head teacher and friend did not hesitate to give me the job. My first day as a teacher I arrived and the teachers were for a staff meeting, excitedly and innocently I took a seat next to my former teacher, she smiled and greeted me. Then she asked “what have you come to do” and I responded “I have been given a position in the school as a teacher of Economics and Christian Religious Education “She smiled again and asked
“do you remember what you told me in class during one of my lessons” my reply was sorry I forgot, she laughed and said “marry a teacher she will not demand for what she can not get” That hit me hard and I felt it was a very unfortunate induction to the profession. I apologised to her and we continued with the meeting. Paradoxically my induction was full of discouraging remarks and experiences of those who taught me about the choice I have made to be a teacher, surprisingly for all this years they had not left despite their concerns. To them they could not tell whether their lives were an achievement or not. One sunny day, a teacher walked up to me and said “young man if you clock six years in the classroom just know its unlikely that you will leave the poverty trap” One female elderly and respectful Geography teacher in one of conversations said “the worst mistake you can make is to marry when you are still teaching, it would be certain you have gone for less”. These words stigmatised me about my second dream and the prospects of realising it.
In my first two years in what seemed to be early job excitement I was so motivated having been made the boys Administrator and a teacher in the School. The very sweet dream I had after the family meeting became a reality sooner than expected.
The headmaster was an inspiration in my teaching career, his reward system was exceptional, he was hardworking and didn’t believe in one who slept for more than six hours, he was a good orator, God loving and a parent to young teachers, very exemplary of a successful teacher. He was a well traveled and experienced man with a great family. The students love for him made them call him Daddy; he would use his humble background to inspire students about the hope for success if you worked hard and remained disciplined. He would take meals with the students to make sure staff and student fed on good meals.
Later, when prosperity and fortune came in, he turned to be the shadow of himself; he was so different from the person I met as a student and as a staff. Every time I felt like calling him Daddy my tongue felt strange in my mouth like one who wanted to confess to the lady of his life how much he loved her.(OUT OF RESPECT I WILL AVOID DISCUSSING HIS PERSONALITY SINCE THIS IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY)
As the years came to pass by I began experiencing what I had always been told. Teachers were so poor that they pretended to be busy in School to take free supper at School and reduce cost of living. Many times they asked students to help them with edibles brought by their parents to make the food tasty. Most of them were not married and complained they were too poor to marry descent women other than fellow teachers which to them was dating poverty with a daring courage; others described it as a blind man leading another blind one. In one incident the head teacher met a team of young teachers and asked us what are you talking about and no body could answer and he chipped in “young men I have given you jobs, employed more female teachers and I meet the cost of your daily meals why can’t you marry?” We all burst out laughing then one of us responded “Sir we are too poor to marry” the head teacher then added “get the problem if you don’t have a problem you don’t look for solutions” again we all burst out laughing. Now, are you surprised why a teacher’s life is like a fire extinguisher always doing away with his unending problems? What do you expect if you are mentored by one with such a philosophy, it means don’t plan, take the risk and expect to get out of it safe. Secondly it also means private investors are better off with struggling teachers because they are easy to manage and demand less. Government is on record saying we can never increase teachers salaries because it will cause inflation in the country, certainly this is lack of political will from a government that does not regard education highly its agenda, As if that was not enough government never raised the teacher ceiling for more than ten years meaning no new recruitments on teachers to get on payroll. Corruption and mismanagement has had teachers who have been dead for 10years keep on receiving salary implying there are ghost teachers receiving that money. When government was put under pressure to increase teachers’ salaries towards elections it was so minimal that it only helped to elevate them to the next tax bracket like its said in the bible to those who don’t have more will be taken away from them and to those who have more will be added unto them.
School administrators devised a time table that was too tight for progressive teachers to do other business to make ends meet. To many who had fallen out with administration their salaries were either delayed or denied. Allowances were given once a year for work done monthly hence forced saving, as if that was not enough you were not given your full due so that if you quit teaching you forego that money and the teachers were too poor to sue any one in court and sustain the cost.
One of the most depressing things in teaching was managing depression. Parents had a low opinion of teachers and despised them especially when students perform badly or get into disciplinary problems, yet when students perform well then they say the student worked hard, a teachers hard work is rarely acknowledged like the African proverb goes the monkey also sweats only that the hair on it prevents one from seeing it. So many low cost items like airtime, Small cups in the market for measuring grains and cereal were named after teachers. During courtship the most plausible reason for rejection was the profession not offering hope. One of the teachers shared with us how he was rejected after dating a university lady for 3yrs only to be told “I honestly just don’t look at my self as the wife of a classroom teacher living in the staff quarters at the inconvenience of students.” At university a friend also told me they competed with a fellow student pursuing Bachelor of Quantitative economics in convincing a lady pursuing Medicine for marriage, when he felt he was taking the day, the student of Economic opened up to the lady and said “can’t you see that by the time this guy will be riding a bicycle and sweating profusely going to class I will be working at the bank in an air conditioned room and you will be a doctor?” On these words he lost to the banker in the making.
Many times teachers have been accused of being the greatest abusers of Alcohol I don’t believe teachers drink more than others, its not so often that you find Alcoholic teachers abusing beers, its always the low cost gins or spirits that they can afford for leisure and can’t afford to address their hangover effect hence poverty and frustration determining their taste and preference and the after effect is a bad reputation, unfortunately the low cost drinks are much stronger, many refer to them as “kill me quick”
In my forth year, January 3rd 2007, as I sat in the staffroom students were still on holidays but there were teachers from all over country marking national exams in our school, I came across a an old news paper, on one page a number of celebrity characters were being interviewed of their new year plans and whether they had met their dreams last Year, none of them was a teacher and many of them had achieved a lot even those with minimal educational backgrounds. When I looked back whether there was any thing I should be proud of, I realised in four years not much of my life had changed in any case I was still waiting for a free meal from the school. When I looked out the teachers marking were moving for lunch and none looked like what I wanted to be at their age. The Church bell was sounded to imply it was mid day; it’s at this hour that I conceded defeat to my second dream. I picked a piece of paper and resigned from my teaching position. Again I felt like darkness at noon, my eyes were open but I was lost in my thoughts WAS IT RIGHT OR WRONG TO QUIT TEACHING is a question I will answer in the future.
‘

Alfreds' Introduction

2009-03-09T16:17:00.001+03:00

Hi I am Alfred Kilama, the new member of the BOSCO Team here in Gulu working as a technical assistant. I graduated in Information Technology from Kampala International University in 2005. I then joined Caritas Gulu Archdiocese to do database management.
During my time with Caritas, I was handling data from Displaced peoples camps as they are the main composition of the beneficiaries of the community service that Caritas work with. This helped me in getting close to the displaced people and even returnees of the LRA insurgencies. Now with BOSCOUganda, I think it is also a better way of reached closer to the people with trainings, use of the intranet website and with the internet one is sure to have helped the local person connect his/her life to the rest of the world since northern Uganda has been left behind from any developments for up to 21 years of the LRA insurgency.
I did a lot of sports both indoor and outdoor sports like table tennis. Badminton, hockey, lawn tennis, football, rugby, and basketball. Though I liked to try out as many sport as I could, I failed to try boxing because of fear of losing my teeth or breaking my nose by somebody’s’ heavy blow. Basketball is my favorite sport though I am not going to take it for a career like Kevin was suggesting because by the time I may not be working at BOSCOUganda I would not be of the age bracket needed for the drafting.
Working with BOSCOUganda is very interesting in a way that you interact a lot with the people who are using the BOSCO infrastructure and also meet new people who are interested in joining the BOSCO family every day. Computers and the Internet where seen by the rural people as something unreachable, others even thought computers were like supernatural beings that knew everything on earth. I sometime hear people murmur in the backgrounds during field visits “computer ki internet ne weng enoni?” meaning “is that the whole computer and internet?”. With this level of illiteracy about computers and the outside world, BOSCOUganda is and will continue to be a fundamental knowledge provider to the people who have been left behind in almost all aspects of life during the insurgency in the region, through the training of trainers for faster and more efficient ICT knowledge dissemination and peace building .
Long live BOSCOUganda/USA.

Building collaborative communities

2009-03-05T09:57:00.004+03:00

Typical Information and Communications Technology (ICT) projects in developing areas of the world focus simply on delivering computers for educational and community use. This basic and simplistic approach has often been tried and the results are varied. Organizations have been committed to sending “refurbished” computers to schools while others have helped start Internet cafes in towns like Gulu, where access to the Internet had only recently been available for the last few years.

An environment like Gulu, however, presents a few basic obstacles to the traditional and tried approaches for bridging the “digital divide” with ICT and computer solutions. For example, one organization we’ve come across is refurbishing old computers in the United States and then shipping them to schools here in northern Uganda. These desktop personal computers (PCs) were built for the 1990’s and consume large amounts of power. Unfortunately, most Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camp schools in northern Uganda don’t have access to a power grid. Consequently, these PCs require use of expensive generators (fuel costs over $8 per gallon in Gulu, Uganda)—most schools can’t afford this and thus can’t use their “refurbished” PCs.

Other locations across northern Uganda do have access to grid power and are at a distinct economic and social advantage. But what good is a PC in these locations if the infrastructure for accessing the Internet is not there and the cost of other solutions like satellite service is prohibitive? In today’s world, providing computers to groups without access to the Internet is like providing a car without wheels—the computer provided is not going to take its users anywhere.

However, BOSCO overcomes these difficulties by providing low-power PCs that can run on a 12 volt battery charged by a small solar panel. On top of this we leap over the gaping infrastructure holes by transmitting our Internet signal over a radio wave that can reach sites as far as 60 miles away from our hub in Gulu. The expensive cost of high-speed Internet service is then shared over the whole network because all of our sites are connected with one modem located at our Gulu office. Each rural or IDP site ends up paying only about $15 per month for access to the Internet.

But besides the technical side of BOSCO, what makes it truly innovative is the philosophy behind what we are trying to do. BOSCO, while delivering ICT resources that leap over the holes in the infrastructure, operates on the premise that the local community has the power to articulate and communicate their own needs better than any outside actor. So, with the help of the Internet we are diving in to a training program at each of our sites that throws the traditional curriculum—heavy on theory and light on practical experience—out the window.

We, instead, begin with small groups of local users, led by volunteers who have prior computer and Internet experience. These groups train together, helping each other learn by biting right into the meat of ICT in today’s world—the Internet. The first thing we do is get them on email, then we let them navigate our simple Intranet site which connects all BOSCO sites to a high speed internal network, useful for posting photos, blogs, and other educational content. After these groups gain competence navigating the web, we point them in the direction of our BOSCO Wikispace so that they can begin collaborating immediately. Collaboration between previously isolated communities can help them reconcile with each other, share information, and articulate local solutions to community problems. Check out the chart below which gives a visual of how this kind of Web 2.0 collaboration can work.

Step 1: User groups formed at BOSCO sites with ongoing competence training (represented by block of people holding hands on each blue space)

Step 2: Local user groups sign up and begin posting their own content on BOSCO Wikispace from their respective school, community center, or IDP camp. (Solid blue lines between blue boxes represent user collaboration on Intranet between BOSCO sites; Dotted black line represents posting of material on BOSCO Wikispace for rest of world to view)

Step 3: Collaborators from within other parts of Uganda and across the rest of the world log onto the BOSCO Wikispace and view user content directly from IDP camps and schools in northern Uganda: Stories are shared, war-ravaged cultural practices documented, community development project proposals are posted.

Step 4: Collaborator input is returned from across the globe as people develop a vested interest in the plight and recovery of the people of northern Uganda. For example, one collaborator funded a small community proposal for $100 dollars to help a youth group of former abductees carry out traditional reconciliation practices. This proposal was posted by the youth group in one of our IDP camp sites.

See image below of what the Pagak camp Wiki site looks like. Notice that various users at this site have links for educational proposals, farming proposals, journal sharing, and a community notice calling for sign ups to partake in computer training at the site.

Please visit our Wikispace site at bosco-uganda.wikispaces.com to begin exploring what is happening on the ground and begin learning how BOSCO is turning the keyboard over to the people who know best what the needs are on the ground: the Ugandan’s themselves.

If you would like to begin responding directly to users at each site by adding your own content to the pages (a wikispace site is by definition a community site where anyone who is a member can edit and add content to the pages) please send your email address to me at kpbailey3@gmail.com .

-Kevin

Reconnectivity Established

2009-02-18T11:39:00.004+03:00

After a few months of struggles finding new tower alternatives to restore Internet connectivity to our IDP camp sites, the BOSCO technical team has reestablished connectivity at at least 4 of our 6 IDP camp sites which will go back online in the next couple of days.

We had previously been using an old 30 meter TV tower to send a long-range WiFi signal to all of our sites. When we were forcibly taken off of our tower, we scrambled, without much luck, to find a new tower location. After experimentation with NanoStation radio technology, however, the team was able to restore connectivity by mounting the radios to a pole attached to the roof of the Catechist Training Center, our network hub. From this location, we established a connection to our Coope IDP site which then relays the signal to Pagak IDP camp, Jengari IDP camp, and Pabo IDP camp. Confidence is high that we will also be able to reach and connect Lacor IDP camp and Unyama IDP camp using NanoStation radios.

In the future we will also be partnering with Radio Maria for tower use. In exchange for providing their Gulu office with connectivity, some of our equipment will sit on their Gulu tower (see photo above). Radio Maria will also be constructing a tower in Opit, to the East, which will allow us to use that space as a relay point for reaching Pader and Kitgum districts in future deployments.

The Project Team is currently organizing all of our site's volunteer users so that they may resume our Web 2.0 Training of Trainers program. This will allow users to again be collaborating on community development proposals while documenting and sharing their lives with fellow Ugandans and collaborators from around the world. More to come soon!

Meet David Aliker!

2009-02-10T18:33:00.010+03:00

Read BOSCO staff member David Aliker's story at here.

It was Friday morning; I sat restless in the staff room starring at the wall deep in thoughts and reflections about what life is all about. The bell goes but I could not hear even when other teachers are complaining of the time keeper hitting the bell so loud that makes a lot of noise.

A few minutes late a class prefect enters the staffroom standing next to me and calls out three times and am still lost in my imagination of life, suddenly a teacher calls out in a loud rude voice”Mr.Aliker, are you not going for your lesson?” its then that I realized that the prefect was calling me for my lesson, after yawning and feeling tired I got up and left for my lesson.

My topic was LIFE IN THE CHANGING SOCIETY, leaning by the window of my classroom I apologized to my students for having been late and they all laughed because it had turned into a habit for me to be late for my lessons and leave early.

Mid way through my lesson as I told my students about the hopeless situation of life in the camps in northern Uganda; where I come from compared to life in the city in central Uganda where there is relative peace, these only provoked arguments from my students about how peaceful Uganda is and how life is what you make it explained a student.

He went further and said “the people in northern Uganda are killing themselves like cockroaches and expect government to stop them!”

Then there was a mixture of frowning and laughter but because he was a good joker all the students ended up laughing, coincidentally he was my student and friend and my students knew I could withstand all forms of stigma.

Suddenly a tall dark gloomy faced student call Komakech (meaning am unlucky) stands up and leaves the class, I could see wrinkles of tears in his eyes so I didn’t stop him and I looked on as he left the class.Realising the problem, I stopped the discussion and began to dictate notes. I kept on hearing words soundly loud in my mind like “the truth is the first casualty of war”. Again I find my self leaving the class before time to attend to the one lost sheep as students kept on giggling and murmuring.From a distance he looked like he was praying, yet he also looked like one who was reflecting on an idea.

As I got closer he asked me to leave him alone and I didn’t hid to his idea. When I approached him and asked what the problem was he didn’t answer back, and then I switched to our local language and asked him what the problem was. He then retorted “Master, why are you pretending that you are with us in our suffering?”.” You are friends and an accomplish of those who castigate us, who call us names and those who hate us that’s why you never get offended of bad things said against us. “He retorted

I then told him I was sorry if I offended him in any way but insisted on asking what was wrong, after a minute he said he was praying to God to forgive those who forsake them. Again I asked “what is the problem?”“Don’t you know I am a former child soldier?” (this) was his response - “Teacher, look am not as handsome and acceptable as my fellow students because of the scars of the war which I can’t explain and don’t understand how I found myself in it .I wonder why there was no one to save me from this acts of violence, am not only physically ugly but mentally shattered because I hear their voices and see them in my dreams crying and asking for help from their persecutors. I am full of guilt, it pains me to see other children being loved and hugged yet I have never been hugged in life.”

I then asked him “do you believe in God?” He answered “some times I feel I have faith but at times I don’t see any sense in believing in God.” he answered” I wish I had died!”Before I could answer him, the bell went and he asked to leave promising me he would open up later.

The next day was one of my saddest moments as a teacher; he had escaped from school leaving behind a note for me that he had abandoned studies because he felt he could not make it. He left his properties behind and until today I have never seen him again.

There are lots of myths about his where about which tells us of his perspective of life.During my December holidays, I got an opportunity to do research in pader district. The research was a continuous one for three years assessing the poverty level of people in the satellite camps and ways of improving their livelihood and monitoring their progress.

The research required that we interview the poorest of the satellite camps.In one home we met a woman who looked old but could have been the fangs of poverty adjusting her age. A story is told of this very woman that she loved to pray and take care of her three grand children, yet records indicated she was not as old as she looked. That she loved to pray so much that one time she kept away from the church for one week and all realized her absence including the priest who asked for her in a sermon and no body could answer, only until the next prayer that the priest was told she refused to pray in church because she was too poor to hide her nudity in church so she preferred to remain home to look after her grandchildren,

later that day the offertory was dedicated to her to buy clothes.My two colleagues who didn’t know the local language introduced themselves and since I was the interpreter I introduced self last.

On hearing my name she looked on motionless and chuckled then asked her grand children to leave and go to play. She then started narrating how her only son and daughter in law died in the war and left her with those grand children, and how she had hoped he would take care of her in old age.

Now she could not dig but collect fire wood for survival and that her son was also called ALIKER.It really touched me so much that I offered her the only money I was paid for the survey, my colleagues were also moved and offered her 20000 or 10 US $ each making 60000or 30 US $ .

In disbelieve she could not remember when she last held such money, she asked me to offer my hands for blessings from our ancestors and spat on it asking them to give me back in plenty and so did my colleagues, after hesitating because they were from different cultures and didn’t have faith.

That evening I went to our place of abode hungry and kept awake in the night reflecting on my latest experiences tears kept rolling from my eyes yet I felt great fulfillment in serving those in need and all I received was gratitude.

Here, I had come face to face with the effects of the 20 year old war on my people. Then I remembered my student and how he felt that day during my lesson. I then realized that in life there is pain that words may not describe but experience can make you appreciate their affection.

As I reflected on my students pain sleep caught up and I woke up with one resolution. QUIT TEACHING AND COME HOME TO SERVE MY PEOPLE

Opportunity strikes for those who are awake. I resigned from my teaching job on 3rd January 2007; I left the city very skeptical if what I was doing was the best. I imagined the nice people in the city, the quality social life in the city, opportunities but in all this I had faith in my conscience.

April 23rd 2007 I got an opportunity to serve Invisible Children as a volunteer; this was one of my greatest moments, joining a reputable organization with an educational background.

The motivation was so much that in four months I had got two promotions, from Education assistant to Education officer. Just as all seem to be fun with a pending visit to my childhood dream, visiting America my conscience called “what is your sense of purpose?

I adapted really well to my new found values that seemed exciting with great people and great works, most interesting was that all this was being done by young people. I then realized fulfillment is one virtue you can’t lie about and it can never be compromised with life’s favours.

My interest was with the people communicating with the suffering people and getting feedback, directly associating my self with them and here I was in a an enclosed office where you sign a form to see me doing desk work, you comfortably communicate in the white man’s language with all your guest or forever facing a computer for the rest of the day.

Yet every time I had opportunity to move out I paid a visit to my mentor Fr.Joseph to listen to his opinion about the suffering of the people and the role of a few educated locals like us especially young cadres with strong Christian upbringings on how to bring social change in our society and he always moved me.

He spoke passionately about a BOSCO project I took long to conceptualise;and why it was important to give our people an opportunity to generate information from their experiences and share them with the world, the importance of communication in the post war erra.

We often agreed and even hoped one day we could do something about it.Finally one day, under the mango tree Fr.Joseph requested me that as a product of the church it was imperative that I gave back to the church through service to BOSCO.

He had told me of my father’s role in the church and knowing him for more than a decade I had never turned him done nor doubted him yet faced with the challenges of a new organization compared to an established reputable organization made it a difficult decision.

Reluctantly I accepted without giving it serious thought. Again he placed the request to me to get on board, my worry was my small family and how it could affect us but eventually I told him” am not certain of the future, but since I have never doubted you in the last one decade, I will take it up without any more thoughts but with faith in his credibility” He only retorted “come and be lead by an old man for you to make the difference.”

Many times we are called to realize our dreams but we abscond because of fear of the unknown. We walk the path of realizing our dreams innocently and ignorantly but if there is any thing that will never break our hearts, it’s our conscience.

In BOSCO, I met a silently humorous team of work mates so respectful in thought and ways, so dependable in private and public, a true manifestation of my teachers common saying “simplicity signifies the magnanimity of the soul,” great personalities yet so simple in their ways, with a cutting edge sense of freedom and responsibility, a team of wise men never acknowledged by the community yet consulted often by the publics most intelligent brains and above all the team is a family making our fraternity a great home to live in.

This is the home of my fulfillment where virtues and values in all you do is a priority, where am directly in touch with my people both in prayer and at work, where satisfaction is not only got from earthly pleasures but ideals one stands counted for.

I feel so privileged amongst my peers to be engaged by my church at this hour in my life. Not forgetting the honor to serve an organization committed to a new concept in our generation of providing communication and information technology to foster social and economic development and peace building in rural communities using a collaborative web based approach.

I thank all those who have made it possible for me to be part of the BOSCO fraternity, I promise to give it unwinding service to the best of my ability and at all times, I further ask God to bless my action in serving humanity through BOSCO.

Obstacles We Face are Daunting

2009-01-31T23:27:00.004+03:00

One of the challenges of trying to launch an innovative non-profit organization in a former war zone is that on any given day, you can run into serious and unexpected problems that can impede your progress.
One story from a couple of months ago best illustrates these surprises and challenges:

One morning, I received a call on my cell phone in Uganda: it was one of our regular users of the BOSCO network, named Jokondino, in Pagak IDP camp, a fairly large and congested camp of over 15,000 people. As an aside, Jokondino is a primary school teacher and has been using our network to find educational information on the web to enhance his knowledge of the school subjects he teaches—many teachers in northern Uganda do not receive adequate training and almost none of the primary school teachers have received a university education. Jokondino also journals about his experiences in Pagak as a primary school teacher on our BOSCO collaborative wikispace workpage (See http://bosco-uganda.wikispaces.com/Jokondino%27s+Journal).

Anyway, back to my story: Jokondino called me and told me that the network was down, he was not able to access the Internet or the central server we use to remotely store user files. At this particular time, our technical assistant was on vacation in Austria so I was left—without many technical skills—to try and figure out what was going wrong with our long range wireless computer network between all of the IDP camps. That morning I received a dozen or more calls from users in other IDP camps wondering why their access to the outside world had been cut off.

Our network uses a 100 foot TV tower to broadcast the long range WiFi signal out to all of the camps using directional antennas. The government of Uganda’s Ministry of Communication had given us written approval to broadcast from this location free of charge. After doing some preliminary testing of the network to find the problem, we were able to determine that the camps were not receiving their signals from the TV tower our equipment sits on.
I asked Fr Joseph Okumu, the Director of BOSCO-Uganda in Gulu, what we should do and he instructed me to drive out to the TV tower to see what I could find.

When I arrived at the tower—with its rusty chain link fence around it—I found a couple of security guards watching over the property, armed with AK 47 guns. In the corner of the property, lying on the ground was a large wooden box with yards of cable coming out of it—The box was labeled with the logo of the Ugandan government telecom company.

I was a bit confused, confronted with a “coup” of sorts of our TV tower. And I was certain that we never previously had used armed guards to protect our equipment. I ended up approaching the two guards and made casual conversation with them. Eventually, I inquired about what was going on and who had moved into the tower property. They informed me that it was the government telecom company. They had purchased the land and wanted to erect a cell phone antenna on top of the tower we were using to transmit our long range WiFi.

I then asked them if I could take a look around the property and they agreed to let me. I looked up at the tower through the glaring sunlight and counted the BOSCO antennas, still mounted 100 feet up—they were all accounted for. Then as my eyes followed the long, thick black cords coming down the tower from the antennas, I noticed that there was an abrupt cut in the wire, which left the wires hanging precariously five feet off the ground with nothing attached to them.
Someone had cut the wires which were attached to a couple of pieces of equipment on the ground, including a solar panel and batteries which powered the antennas on top of the tower, enabling them to transmit the Internet WiFi signal to the IDP camps. It was clear then that someone had stolen the equipment on the ground—equipment totaling almost 2,500 dollars.
Later on, we would come to find out that the government telecom company had purchased the land that the tower sat on. They wanted us to remove our equipment from the tower—it’s still not clear who actually stole the equipment we had on the ground. We did climb the tower to remove our antennas and spent the next weeks trying to figure out a way to redeploy our system on a new tower—either renting space on another tower or building our own.

Since that time we have been in discussions with the government telecom company and have come close to resolving future disputes regarding the renting of tower space for our equipment. The difficult part about this incident, from the perspective of our organization, was that we had a legal right and permission to be there and no recourse or funds to contest such a large government entity in a court of law.

Last week, we had just finished discussions with the government telecom company about the legal arrangements for renting space on the tower they had taken over for us. We went into the discussions with a clear understanding of a potential partnership: We would be providing Uganda’s poorest and most rural areas with Internet access (people who would be unable to afford a regular Internet subscription) and the government telecom company would benefit from this because we were training their customers of tomorrow. Our preliminary rental discussions had us renting tower space for about $40 a month—a reasonable rate we presumed.

Well, after going to Kampala to finalize the legal documents, we discovered that the government telecom company had inserted a price in the contract calling for rental space on the tower to be charged at $700 per month—per piece of equipment. We have 6 small antennas to mount on that tower so the total price would have come to $4200 per month! Keep in mind, building our own tower would cost between $12,000-$15,000. Of course, we didn’t sign this contract and came away a bit disappointed.

The work carries on, however, as we try to find a creative solution to this problem. We have permission to use a Catholic radio station tower in Gulu Town as a short-term solution and then are experimenting with new technology that may allow us to skip large towers all together. We hope that as we learn and overcome these challenges that we will be able to accomplish our mission of reaching all of the most rural and war-affected areas of northern Uganda.

A long overdue update!

2009-01-09T12:52:00.004+03:00

It’s been a long while since I have updated my blog here. A lot has been happening with BOSCO since I last posted about our human rights monitoring initiative that we are doing.

In fact, you may not have known this, but between the last time I posted and now, I spent about 7 weeks in South Bend, IN working with the BOSCO board of directors and folks at the University of Notre Dame on our initiatives.

I arrived back in Gulu, Uganda last week to continue my “on the ground” efforts, working with people in the IDP camps here to find useful ways to connect them to the outside world with our solar-powered Internet PCs.

Maybe I’ll just start by giving you all an update of where the project is at now and then where I hope it will be going:

Right before I left Gulu for the US at the end of October, we had just found funding to support local capacity building. We realized that if this ICT project was going to be sustainable in the long run, we were going to have to have local, Ugandan, staff available and trained to carry out a lot of the technical computer networking tasks, especially as we expand to new sites in northern Uganda.

We were able to hire two new Ugandan staff, one as a “Technical Assistant” and the other as a “Project Coordinator.” This brings our team total in Gulu, including myself, to 6 people. We now have four Ugandan staff—our Executive Director, Fr Joseph Okumu, (seen here talking about the project) is a local Diocesan priest who is very politically and socially connected in this area and brings a ton of development expertise.

The next piece of big news is that we were able to secure an agreement with a group of local partners to expand our network to 12 new sites east of Gulu into Kitgum and Pader Districts (map of northern Uganda here). We will provide connectivity to a local NGO looking to setup ICT resource centers for youth who were formerly abducted by the LRA and have returned home. Also, we are connecting the local government offices and a couple of vocational training schools to our network. It is hard to imagine that until now, even the local government offices in district headquarters (a district here is like a state in the U.S.) still do not have access to Internet or the infrastructure for reliable service in the year 2009. We are hoping to setup an e-governance concept whereby people in rural outposts will be able to communicate and collaborate with their elected officials at the district headquarters.

We hope to begin deploying at these new sites in the next couple of months. We also will have the help of a Notre Dame engineering student this summer who is being sponsored by Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns in a summer service/internship capacity.

As for what is next on the horizon: Much of what I have begun here on the ground in Gulu and at Notre Dame will require my continued involvement into next year. Last December, when I began raising funds to support my involvement, I originally had committed to one year of service with BOSCO. As I grew comfortable with my role it has taken on something like a full-time management role. I am very invested in the future of the organization and I was lucky enough to have great support and prior experience in Uganda which made for a smooth transition into my work in Gulu.

As a final note, I came across a reflection I was reading on how we can always strive to be more compassionate with those we interact with and those we are serving. This reflection basically says: compassion is not a gesture of sympathy for those who are less fortunate or who grow up in places of violence or destruction; compassion is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a gesture of pity either; compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and investing a part of your life with them; it is about learning from them and listening to their stories while reaching out to offer your own story, giving a helping hand where possible. I think that is what I’m striving to do and I hope that is what the BOSCO project is ultimately about.

-Kevin

News of Nov '08 LRA activity

2008-11-25T23:46:00.007+03:00

The LRA seems to be active in the Congo, and waiting to play a role in Southern Sudan destabilization. See the article

The deadly cult of Joseph Kony

While the world watches one conflict in Congo, another is raging – inspired by a sadistic rebel leader with a taste for black magic. Daniel Howden reports from Sakure

Sakure is on the front line of a war that is not supposed to exist. Perched on the rim of the Congo basin, it looks out from South Sudan and into the vastness of the rainforest beyond. The victims of this war are strewn over the floor of that forest, their bodies left to rot, while others have been left as ashes in the charred remains of their villages. Those that have survived are huddled among Sakure's grass huts nervously eyeing the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo across which they fled.

It is a war that is waged by heavily armed soldiers against unarmed villagers and its casualties both living and dead mark the rebirth of Africa's most feared guerrilla group – the Lord's Resistance Army. It was supposed to be a moribund force, a Ugandan rebellion which lost its support and its way after two decades of increasingly sickening violence, with seemingly little point.

A campaign launched in the 1980s claiming to defend the rights of the Acholi people in northern Uganda had become a byword for sadism. Years of abductions where children were forced to kill their own parents in a brutal initiation had left them feared but hated. Their leader and self-styled messiah Joseph Kony was supposed to be on the point of surrender, with his diminishing band of fighters contained in a transit camp awaiting the signing of a peace plan.

Instead the terror has been transplanted, this time to the remote north of Congo. The bewildered victims of this campaign know nothing of the cause espoused by those that are hunting them – they have never been to neighbouring Uganda. The rebel fighters moved into camps in Congo's Garamba National Park in what was hoped would be the final staging post before peace. But those talks have collapsed after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Kony's arrest. A deadline for the end of this month has been given to the guerrillas. They sign the deal or face the consequences, but in their hundreds they have already slipped the net.

All along the border with South Sudan scores of refugees are streaming out of the bush and across the border every day with horrifying accounts of the return of the LRA.

Father Paul was on his way for an afternoon nap on 17 September in the Komboni mission in the Congolese village of Duru when he heard shouting. Looking outside he saw dozens of soldiers marching towards the mission. "They were dressed like soldiers but they were dirty. Some wore witch doctors' hats and dreads in their hair." Marching with them were the girls and boys of the village, women with babies, all carrying their meagre possessions: mattresses, radios, sugar, mobile phones and soap.

Pushing past Father Paul into the courtyard of the mission everyone was ordered to sit on the floor, while the building was ransacked. A frail man in his late 70s, Father Paul was taken to his room and tortured by soldiers who insisted the priests must have money in the mission. "I thought I was going to die so I got on my knees and prayed to the Lord. When they heard me say his name they screamed at me, 'Don't say that word!' And then hit me with their guns."

Such attacks have been replayed across an entire region in recent weeks driving tens of thousands of the Zande people to flee into South Sudan or deeper into the forests of Congo.

The scene, says Father Paul, was straight out of the days of slavery. The children were divided, then bound together and made to march, he remembers.

Left by his attackers in the bush, the priest returned to Duru to see its thousands of shelters ablaze, with the village's only permanent structure, the mission, black and charred. Not a shot had been fired. The group prefer to use machetes. Father Galdino Sakondo, a Catholic priest who has been working with victims of the terror on both sides of the border says the silent tactic is deliberate. "They don't shoot, they are just chopping. You don't know they are there until they reach your house."

That was the fate of 15-year-old Neima Kumbari in the village of Napopo. "They came in the morning but I didn't see them at first." When she did realise the soldiers had arrived it was already too late. Her parents were beaten with rifle butts, then, along with her uncle and a brother, burned alive in their own hut. The soldiers had "no mercy", she says.

Neima escaped by running into the bush while her village was torched, stepping over the fallen bodies of her dead neighbours as she ran. After two days she reached Sakure having lost everything, her whole family. In a flat, calm voice, Neima says she is still haunted by the bodies she stepped on.

Philip Charles didn't get the chance to run. A shy, quiet 16-year-old, he was at home near the Congo border when the area was overrun by a raiding party from the LRA. The children were abducted, their families' looted possessions strapped to them and then they were tied together in pairs and made to sit in silence. "If we made a sound they would beat us to death," he was told.

Later after the LRA fighters had been repelled in an attempted attack on Sakure they frog-marched "many" children into the forest.

Philip remembers telling the girl he was tied to that they had to find a way to escape. "I was thinking I wouldn't survive. They wanted to turn us into soldiers." After a night in captivity he was able to untie himself, throw down his heavy load and run into the bush. She was not so lucky. The fate of the lost girl is as predictable as it is nightmarish.

Amony Evelyn was 12 when she was taken under similar circumstances. Her life in the bush was a mixture of drudgery and torture. Part cook, part porter, part sex slave to Joseph Kony himself. A man many believe to be clinically insane, he is said to see his mission as "purifying" the Acholi people and to encourage a quasi-religious cult involving black magic. She bore him two children, the first when she was still 13 and was pregnant with a third when she fled last year after 10 years in captivity.

Today she is piecing her life back together with the help of a counsellor, Paul Rubangakena from the Catholic charity Caritas, in Gulu, across the border in Uganda. He says the girls and boys in his care "wake up screaming from their nightmares" – even the staff are traumatised by the litany of horrors they have had to hear. The UK-based arm of Caritas, Cafod, is also among the groups assisting the refugees in South Sudan. Raphael Wamae, the group's humanitarian officer, has been part of an early assessment team who arrived on the scene to gauge the scale of the refugee crisis. "We cannot ignore what is happening here because of events in Goma. This is part of the same crisis. Armed factions are roaming Congo preying on defenceless people," he says.

Already more than 5,000 refugees have been counted, all in desperate need of food and shelter. Countless more are roaming the bush and some 60 more are arriving every day. Catholic church groups are calling for urgent assistance and warning that the area risks being ignored.

"The same factors driving the humanitarian disaster in Eastern Congo are at play here: weak states, lack of law and order and the scale of mineral wealth in DRC leave ordinary people at the mercy of men with guns," says Mr Wamae.

Just as in the crisis in the east of Congo, the national army does nothing to protect its people and the UN peacekeepers, Monuc, are powerless to help.

At stake are a mesh of competing interests that stretch from Khartoum, through Darfur to the threatened Eastern Congolese city of Goma and the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. Rebel groups can be used to control the money generated by Congo's fabulous mineral wealth but they also serve the dual purpose of helping to destabilise regional rivals. A recipe for proxy wars without end.

Lexon Bashir, the director of the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, rails against the "so-called LRA". "Why are they abducting children? Sudanese boys and girls as well. We have seen children burnt beyond recognition their bodies thrown into fires." He sees an outside hand in the violent re-emergence of Mr Kony's cult but refuses to say whose.

In private others are less reticent, pointing to helicopter drops of arms and ammunition to the LRA. They believe that the government of Khartoum led by President Omar al-Bashir – a fellow indictee the ICC – is helping Kony's army with a view to destabilising southern Sudan ahead of a possible resumption of that civil war.

In the clearing of Sakure, thousands of miles from Khartoum, girls like Neima suffer the reality of these machinations. Despite nearly 400 soldiers from South Sudan stationed here to protect them and UN food aid finally reaching the refugees, she feels that she is still being hunted. "There is a war," she says. "I don't know what they want but I have heard they are called the LRA. I'm scared. They are coming to Sakure."

From altar boy to sadistic killer
The altar boy who became a rebel leader who turned into a psychopath. The self-styled prophet Joseph Kony has remained an elusive and terrifying figure casting a spell over first Uganda, then Sudan and the Central African Republic, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Born in 1961, he inherited his mantle as leader of the Acholi people from his aunt, Alice Lakwena, a mystic who started the Holy Spirit Movement against the government in Kampala.

While initially enjoying strong public support, Kony's group, the Lord's Resistance Army, turned on its own supporters in an increasingly brutal and incoherent campaign, supposedly bent on "purifying" the Acholi people and turning Uganda into a theocracy ruled by the Ten Commandments.

His army has been forcibly recruited from the Acholi, with as many as 20,000 children abducted and forced to commit atrocities that prevented them from returning home.

He has nurtured a cult of personality, claiming he is visited by a multinational host of 13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom. Former abductees speak in awed terms of his "magical powers" and abrupt mood changes. He is said to have taken up to 60 wives and fathered countless children.

A school dropout described as a "gentle boy" by classmates, he has become one of the most sadistic leaders in Africa. In 2005, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest for crimes against humanity.
Full article in new window

The youth search for peace

2008-08-25T11:10:00.002+03:00

One of the greatest tragedies of the war in northern Uganda over the past twenty years is the devastation it has inflicted on the civilian population and especially on the youth. Throughout most of the conflict, the LRA rebels employed a strategy which terrorized those living in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps by abducting youth—both boys and girls—to use as child soldiers and wives for the older soldiers. Many were kidnapped directly from their villages and from the IDP camps where they were supposed to have been protected from rebel attack. Once abducted, it is well documented that the rebels often used brutal psychological tactics on these youth by sometimes forcing them to kill their own family and community members.

As the violence began to subside in 2005 and 2006 with the onset of the Juba Peace talks in South Sudan between the LRA and the Government of Uganda, increasingly more youth who had been soldiers—some since the age of eight—were able to escape and return home to their villages. However, it wasn’t just as simple as walking back into the village and being greeted and welcomed by loved ones and community members. First, many former abductees had nobody and nothing to come back to. Secondly, they were ostracized and also experienced a great deal of stigmatization, which was simply overwhelming for most.

This stigmatization may seem odd to a Westerner at first because, after all, it was not these youth’s fault that they were abducted and forced to commit terrible acts against their own people. Nonetheless, when they began returning in larger numbers, the community had a great fear of these “former rebels.” The community had knowledge of the acts they had committed and many members of the community had witnessed these acts first-hand and now were faced with accepting those youth who had committed these acts back into the community.

I asked a colleague at Human Rights Focus—a non-governmental organization in Gulu that has been one of the leading monitors and watchdogs of the human rights conditions in the IDP camps over the past few years—the following question: What are some ways to help the youth/former abductees to overcome the stigmatization they usually feel upon reentry into their communities? He responded, “The abductees were removed from their community by the rebels. They were then forced to carry out serious human rights violations and to abduct others. People in the community have a very serious fear of these children when they return to the camps. They are ostracized from the community, ignored, and socially excluded. They are kept in a constant state of rejection.”

He continued on to say that the question, then, that communities and organizations in Gulu are now asking themselves is: How can we help reduce the stigmatization and foster a process of reintegration that encourages harmony, peace, and reconciliation. The Church has begun to take on this role at an institutional level. Archbishop John Baptist Odama did not ask the child soldiers to repent for any atrocities they committed. Nor did Odama set out by laying culpability explicitly with LRA commanders—although he did condemn their actions. Instead, he took the sin of war and of the ongoing humanitarian crisis onto the whole Acholi community. For Odama, the community repents because the community was responsible for the well being of these children—the sin is taken on by the whole of the Church. Furthermore, Odama has never referred to the LRA or those abducted as “the rebels.” He has, instead, continued to call them “his children.”

But action is also taking place among the youth themselves as they realize that any attempt at adequate reintegration into the community will ultimately have to begin with their own efforts. Consequently, many camps now have youth groups that have risen up, formed by young leaders who were once victims of abduction. They have returned with the goal of working to reharmonize their community and especially their fellow youth.

Dennis, the leader of the Yub Pa Lacwey Youth Group in Lacor IDP camp started his group in 2006 for those youth in Lacor IDP camp who were returning from the bush to their community after being abused by the rebels. Dennis himself was abducted at the age of 8—he is now 18—and was forced to do things he says are unimaginable for any human to have to endure.

Indeed, the psychological trauma of these youth is more than substantial and for most, professional treatment is a need. However, there are virtually no psychiatrists in the region and even the NGOs, community organizations, and the Church are often underequipped, undertrained, and underfunded to be able to carry out any substantial and widespread post-trauma and psycho-social treatment.

So, instead, the youth in Lub Pa Lacwey group come together under a common them: unity. In Yub Pa Lacwey’s mission statement, they say their main objectives are to reduce the level of stigmatization that former abductees currently face, to offer each other support emotionally, psychologically, and economically, and finally to uplift good cultural practices through the practice of traditional cultural dances and through the formulation of dramas which offer community sensitization on such topics as HIVAIDS, peace and reconciliation, and landmine awareness.

When I had a chance to witness Dennis and his group performing the traditional Acholi “Bwola” dance, I could sense the role that this was playing in the release of suppressed emotions and tragic memories. The dancing, the harmony, and the unity of the dance itself acted as a moment of peace for these youth, even if only for a few minutes. It reminds these youth that peace is still possible in a world that for them has been torn apart by senseless violence.

Dennis says of the dancing, “It is so refreshing to dance and to meet people who had been through the same things. I feared returning to the village not just because of the stigma and problems of food, but because if the peace talks break down then the soldiers will come back for us and this time they will kill us. But when I’m dancing I forget the past, the bad images and bad dreams. It silences the cries of those I saw killed. It refreshes me.”

The possibilities!

2008-08-04T11:32:00.001+03:00

After only a few weeks working in the idp campss, I am already beginning to understand the complexities of development work. Whenever a service is provided or a material item is provided to people who are in very vulnerable situations, such as the internally displaced persons around Gulu, the implications of this give-take relationship can become enormous for the sustainability of any development project. Take, for example, our project with BOSCO. Right now we have installed low power computers, internet access and VOIP telephone service at seven sites in various IDP camps around Gulu. Yet it is not as easy as it sounds to just plop a computer with internet access wherever you please in these camps. First, there are technical things to consider and with the radio transmitters that allow the network to function, there are only certain places in these IDP camps which are accessible.

Secondly, one has to consider security issues. The computer has to be kept in a building which keeps it safe from the elements (this is not always easy to do in some of the camps which lack feasible structures for keeping such equipment) and safe from theft. This means that some of the computers must be kept in traditionally non-public spaces such as a teacher’s office or the residence of the local priests in the rectory of a church.

This brings us to the third issue. Who takes ownership of this material item that has been given? In this case a computer with access to the internet and cheap phone service has been installed; so does this belong to the person with whom it resides? Does it belong to the local school? Does it belong to the IDP camp as a whole (populations in the largest camps can be in the tens of thousands). One of the difficulties then is that when the material item has been given it often comes attached with privilege and power as far as who is allowed to access this new material item. Clearly, only so many people can have access to a computer at once so it is not feasible to say that anybody from and IDP camp with 30,000 residents is free to use the BOSCO computer at any time they choose. The question remains then, how can we best set up the expectations to realistically accommodate as many people as possible, facilitating as many users of the computers as possible, while also keeping in mind the restraints listed above.

One of the easiest solutions to this is simply to have more computers. Right now in some of the we have many people who are learning to use basic computer programs as well as discovering for the first time the communications and self-advocacy potential of the internet with email and VOIP. They are becoming capable users of this technology simply because they have access to it and can learn with very little guidance how to use it. In some camps, we even have users that are proficient enough that they have started trying to train other peers in the camps by setting up tutoring schedules.

Consequently, in a short period of time, I am already convinced that one of the key issues to expanding the abilities of those interested in becoming proficient in computers is simply access to a computer. These days, most of us each have our own personal computer at home. Some households have as many computers as people. And how are we (most of us!) able to stay ahead of the curve in our use of a computer to complete our daily tasks: again, simply because of the ease with which we have access. With more computers—even only a handful—at each of the existing sites, we could greatly improve the abilities of the Acholi people to learn to become proficient users and, in time, they can be trained to use the internet to advocate for their own cause.

For example, BOSCO has set up a wikispace page which allows internet users in the camps to collaborate with each other and with those in far off lands such as the U.S. Using this wikispace, the users in the camps have been able to post their own proposals for various causes. The site works like an easy-to-use webpage allowing people in the camps to edit and post their own material. In the Pagak IDP camp, farmers have started to post farming proposals on the BOSCO wikispace. This is a great tool for these farmers to start advocating for their own cause as they resume farming again after being cut off from their main source of income during the war (people living in the idp camps didn’t have access to their land when the conflict was at its peak).

For those interested in viewing one of these proposals, you can visit http://bosco-uganda.wikispaces.com/Pagak . Christopher who currently lives in Pagak camp, has organized a youth farming movement and has posted his farming proposals on the BOSCO wikispace. If you navigate to this site, simply click on the "Organic Farming" link and it will take you to his proposal page. Once users such as Christopher are proficient enough to use the computer and the internet in these kind of ways, the next challenge is trying to get their proposals read by the appropriate organizations who could help fund such proposals. Nonetheless, I think these proposals demonstrate the value of having access to computers and the internet in a post-conflict landscape. I hope that it will continue to be shown that providing people with resources that allow them to advocate for themselves will be a sustainable model of development for BOSCO!

Farewell Philipp!

2008-08-04T02:17:00.001+03:00

BOSCO has lost a fine asset in Philipp Glaser, who is now returning to his home in Europe. Philipp served one year in a volunteer position as our local network administrator in Gulu. In his time in Uganda he trained a team of local technicians, taught community members how to make use of the BOSCO system, and even drew up a proposal for our upcoming mini-deployment, now scheduled for this fall. We will miss him, and we all hope he will be available to return, as he has so indicated, to lend his expertise to our next major deployment (in Kitgum and Pader) in the months to come. Best wishes for the future, Philipp!...T

New Deployment Preparation and Web Updates

2008-07-30T03:38:00.002+03:00

Hello everyone. I thought a few updates were appropriate as of now. Our web site has added a new link, to Oxfam-Australia's "Refugee Realities: Your Rights in Crisis". This site has first hand accounts from IDP camp dwellers on the conditions of their day to day existence in these hopeless places. We hope that viewing them will help all to better understand what we are trying to do here at BOSCO.

There are, for example, interviews with two young men named "Law" and "Royal Lion" from the Pabbo IDP site. Please visit and take a look!

On another front. As you know, we have been planning a medium sized expansion into Kitgum, and to the Lacor hospital among others, of the BOSCO network. To this end, we have sent two new advanced long-range Wi-Fi devices to Gulu for testing by the team, in preparation for what we hope will be a successful deployment this September. Getting this done will not just bring communication and safety to an entire new province (Kitgum), and provide emergency communications between the camps and the Hospital, but will also allow us to broaden our financial base so as to secure our broadband providers costs, and hopefully to purchase more bandwidth in the near future...Ted

An introduction from Kevin Bailey, Notre Dame graduate 2008

2008-07-12T17:35:00.003+03:00

Over a year ago I made my first trip to Uganda. I had just received a research grant from Notre Dame to spend a couple weeks during Christmas break studying the effects of globalization on the spirituality of the Ugandan people. While on my flight to Uganda, I was waiting in line for the restroom when a man in front of me asked me where I was from—he must have noticed that I was wearing a Notre Dame shirt. I went on to tell him that I was a student at Notre Dame and then he introduced himself as Gus Zuelhke, also a Notre Dame graduate doing work in Uganda.

In those next few minutes, Gus explained to me that he had started a project in northern Uganda, collaborating with the Archdiocese of Gulu. Initially, Gus’ idea was to use a technology that we take for granted in the U.S. as a method for saving lives in the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps of northern Uganda. The poorly protected camps were often raided in the past by LRA rebels, leading to the abduction of children to use as child soldiers in their war against the Ugandan government. Gus’ idea was to use wireless internet, solar powered computers and VOIP technology (similar to Skype)—cheap internet phone service—to connect the isolated camps which were often without electricity or effective modes of communication. This, in turn, would allow the camps to alert and warn each other of rebel movements in the region and would act as a deterrent to the rebels by providing immediate documentation and witnesses to the violence committed in the camps. At the end of our conversation, Gus and I promised to meet again back in South Bend to discuss shared experiences in Uganda.

A few months later, I returned to Uganda through Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns International Summer Service Learning Program to teach at a Holy Cross secondary school near Jinja, Uganda. Before I left, Gus told me that he would put me in contact with leaders from the Archdiocese of Gulu so that I could spend a few days in their hospitality. At the time I didn’t think that I would have time to get up to the north because I was only spending nine weeks in the country and eight of them were spent teaching. However, I became convinced that there was another side of Uganda—a forgotten side—that was not apparent to me while I was in Jinja.

Yet, it wasn’t until my second month of teaching that the conflict in the north would really enter my consciousness. Next to the schools, there was a novitiate for the Sisters of the Holy Cross and we would occasionally go over to eat with them. After lunch on this particular day, we had an extra hour so the sisters asked us if we wanted to see a new documentary that they had just received on DVD. It was called “Uganda Rising” and was a chilling and poignant description of the events that had occurred just 200 miles north of us over the past twenty years. Watching this documentary deeply affected me; the documentary showed how the policies from both within and outside of Uganda had affected the life of the conflict and the continuing neglect in seeking a peaceful solution. It showed pictures of human atrocities (a photo of a brain hacked out of someone’s head was shown), killings, and of many acts of absolute human terror. To say the least, I was touched, terrified, moved, speechless, and upset all at the same time.

After watching it I was emotionally exhausted and had no words left in me. It was a surreal experience, one in which you realize only silence remains—there was so much evil seen, so much gratuitous suffering that all that remains in the silence of God. At the time, I could think of nothing else to do except to pray in the sister’s chapel, so I did just that. I asked God for peace, for love, for the softening of hardened hearts. And I thanked Him for the gift of hope.

It was at this point that I started to contemplate going to the north to learn about the conflict first hand—to see if I could discover the forgotten side of the Ugandan story. I thought to myself: how can I continue to neglect this conflict and the Acholi people who had been left behind?

I did eventually make it up to northern Uganda at the end of my time in southern Uganda. I had the chance to be hosted by key leaders in the Archdiocese of Gulu and to visit the IDP camps to see with my own eyes what had been shown so poignantly by the “Uganda Rising” documentary and what had been spoken so passionately about by Gus and others during their work in and around Gulu.

As my senior year at Notre Dame began, I remained abreast of news coming out of northern Uganda and kept in touch with Gus, learning more about how communication could lend itself to peacebuilding and development in the region. Sometime during Christmas break I decided that I needed to return to Uganda after graduation. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to do this as I learned that there was not room for any more volunteers at the Holy Cross secondary school I had taught at the previous summer. Northern Uganda was on my mind, yet I didn’t know how I would be able to contribute. I talked to Gus about possibly returning to northern Uganda to work with the BOSCO project and the Archdiocese of Gulu. He agreed that there was plenty of work to be done and that I would be able to make a substantial contribution. So we outlined a basic proposal about what I might work on over the course of the year in northern Uganda. It all sounded good and exciting until I realized that BOSCO had never had a full-time volunteer from the U.S. before. It is an organization run full-time by committed board members who do a fantastic job of contributing to the growth of the project from within their other professional commitments as lay catechists, IT specialists, and physics teachers, among others.

In short, I came to the realization that to make this possible, I would need to raise all of the money in order to support myself for the year. So I sat down, did some research, and figured out that with the cost of airfare, health insurance, room and board, transportation, etc, I would need to raise almost $23,000 dollars to support my work with BOSCO. It seemed like an impossible task at the time and I was not convinced that I wanted to go forward with it. After all, I was busy trying to keep up in my classes and enjoy the last couple of months of my senior year, while also applying to other service programs as a safety net in case returning to northern Uganda would not be an option.

Gradually, however, the donations started rolling in from family, friends, and supporters at Notre Dame. By March I had raised half of the money necessary to support myself for my work with BOSCO. And within a few weeks after that I was able to finish my fundraising efforts—It seemed that as I followed my heart and sought something that I find great value in, all the world conspired to help me achieve it. I have been blessed and humbled by all of those who have made my upcoming journey possible through their selfless generosity.

Finally, as I arrive in northern Uganda I will be living at the Archdiocese of Gulu’s Catechist Training Center, where they often host visitors. My role will be similar to that of a “community organizer.” I will be visiting the IDP camps frequently to assess how the BOSCO systems are being used and to try and facilitate greater and more effective use of the technology so that leaders in the camps can communicate with each other and with the Archdiocese. This will help the Acholi people to become self-advocates for peace, by relieving some of the isolation they currently experience with the lack of communication resources in the camps and with the outside world.

I ask for your prayers and continued support as I undertake this endeavor. I have been blessed with this opportunity and I intend to take full advantage of it. Really, all I am trying to do is follow my heart, follow what I’m most passionate about, and to seek to live fully and learn from those I encounter.

Kevin and Matt in Kampala

2008-07-10T03:40:00.002+03:00

Kevin arrived in Kampala early this morning; Matt's plane from Newark was delayed, and he missed his flight from Amsterdam. He'll arrive on July 10th shortly before 1 pm, and the two of them will travel with Stefan to Gulu later that day. It will be great for the collaboration to have both Kevin and Matt in Gulu this summer!

Greeting from Gus

2008-06-24T23:04:00.003+03:00

Greetings to everyone on the BOSCO Newsletter from Gus Zuehlke. It's remarkable to see how BOSCO has multiplied in sites searchable on Google since we launched the project One thing which has fascinated me is the visits we have been getting on our website from all corners of the world!

I hope this newsletter will be another way of increasing our communications with the world community. Just today I received a phone call on the BOSCO VoIP system from the IDP camp named Unyama. This call would have been unthinkable just over a year ago, but thanks to the dedicated efforts of Ted, our friends from Inveneo, and of course VoX, as well as Philipp Glaser and Stefan Bock, this phone call was made possible.

All best wishes to all my BOSCO friends!...Gus Zuehlke

2008-06-22T04:13:00.001+03:00

This will be a great tool to keep closer tabs on progress and opportunities for the project. Thanks for getting it off the ground, Ted!

IDP camps to gain ability to recieve phone calls

2008-06-11T05:20:00.003+03:00

Update - Our new Ubuntu server and backup have arrived in Kampala. What this means, among other technical developments, is that the residents of our client IDP camps will now be able to receive direct phone calls, at extra low cost, from anywhere in the world, and free from Indiana.

Thanks to Jeff Wishnie at Inveneo, and good luck Philipp in the installation! More to follow soon...Ted
More information - New window

Window to the world

2008-06-11T00:35:00.007+03:00

Here's an article I wrote for ICT Update magazine, which specializes in agricultural uses of Internet communications technologies. The hope is to get the word out as widely as possible about our project!...Ted

The war in northern Uganda has driven thousands of people from their homes to live in camps. Now, after a lot of trial an error, BOSCO Uganda has brought the internet and low-cost phone calls to the camps, giving the people a chance to tell their own story.

When an old friend of mine returned from Uganda and told me about the conflict in the north of the country, I have to say, I only paid scant attention. I was well-educated and an avid news junkie, but I couldn’t identify with anything he was telling me. The rebels, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), were fighting a classic insurgency which defied military solution. Local people in the area, the Acholi, were living in government camps, mainly to prevent their children being taken in the night to fight for the LRA. But the camps had very few supplies. The UN and other organizations supplied the basic needs of food and shelter, but could do little else.

My friend, Gus Zuehlke, travelled to Uganda in the spring of 2006. Against the strenuous objections of his hosts who were concerned for his safety, he went to the northern town of Gulu and visited the Pagak camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the heart of the war zone. The elders, from the local Acholi people, living in the camp told him that they wanted the world to know what was going on in their homeland. But they weren’t able to get the story out themselves as they had no means to communicate with journalists either in their own country or abroad.

Their courage and determination inspired Gus to tell their story when he returned to the United States. His own enthusiasm stirred many people who then offered to help. I had previously worked with Gus and got involved when he asked me if using satellite phones would help the Acholi get their story out. I looked into it, but quickly saw that such a system would be prohibitively expensive. We needed a more affordable solution that would work in the difficult local conditions. Before long, I began researching and designing a project to help connect the people living in the camps with the wider world. The cease-fire agreement reached in July 2006 gave us an opportunity to install a system, but it also fuelled our sense of urgency in case fighting broke out again.

Ideas

Cellular phone services in northern Uganda are erratic, unreliable and very expensive. Most northerners cannot afford even a long-distance call inside the country. Using mobile phones would therefore not be an option. I looked into the possibility of sending up balloons mounted with Wi-Fi routers to provide a cellular service and internet access. At a certain altitude the balloons jettison their hardware, which then float to the ground with parachutes. The system had worked successfully in the USA, but in northern Uganda the rough terrain, ongoing hostilities, worries about wildlife and the harsh climate meant that recovering the equipment later would too difficult, dangerous and too expensive to be practical.

We briefly considered using low-cost plastic laptops and generators, but these were either unavailable or too expensive. After some time, we realized that the best solution would be a rather typical Wi-Fi local area network (WLAN), but we would still have to adapt it to Uganda’s unreliable and often unavailable power supplies. And again, the cost of modifying the WLAN would be well beyond our reach. Eventually, we saw that to be considered worthwhile, any solution would have to serve all five of the following functions:

-provide internal emergency communications – between the IDP camps and the rest of Uganda;

- provide external emergency communications – between foreign and Ugandan officials and technical personnel;

- provide educational opportunities through the internet and in schools;

- enable the people in the camps to speak for themselves, and do their own advocacy campaigns via the internet; and

- allow users to use images, video and voice to focus the attention of the international media on the plight of what, until now, has been an invisible tragedy.

Of these, we regarded the last point as the most crucial because, without international recognition of the problem, no solution would be truly beneficial to the people affected by the war.

Durability

In the end, we decided to call our project Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach, or BOSCO. In March 2007, a group of us travelled to northern Uganda to install an internet service for the residents of the IDP camps. The team consisted of myself, Gus, a technical consultant, and technicians from Inveneo, an organization that specializes in supplying communications equipment to rural areas in developing countries, and who also has experience working in Uganda. Together, we set up a local area network using long-range Wi-Fi networking devices, ultra low-power computers, and a VoIP (voice over internet protocol) telephone system. The network is powered by solar panels which charge a system of batteries. The lack of reliable electricity supplies in the area meant that an alternative power source was necessary.

We used the existing infrastructure provided by the church that serves the seven IDP camps, as they had buildings and offices in each camp which gave us the security we needed for the equipment. Two archdiocesan offices in the town of Gulu are connected to the internet via satellite and from there the long-distance Wi-Fi transmitters carry the internet signal out to the IDP camps, the furthest of which is 70 kilometres away. The system uses very little power (only 12 volts) which vastly reduces the amount of expensive solar power needed. Serving the seven camps is seen as a pilot stage of the project. The system has been designed to so that it can be easily extended to reach the Acholi villages once people return after the war.

The components of the network are resistant to heat, humidity and dust, which means they can still operate in harsh environments. The system is easy to use, both for users and administrators who are new to technology. Such simplicity allows our team, headed by our local administrators Philipp Glaser and Stefan Bock, to serve the IDP camps more efficiently and provides them with the means to communicate immediately both with other offices in the camps and with funding organizations in the United States and Europe.

Elementary

We have approximately 30 desktop computers in the network. They are situated in church facilities in the IDP camps at Pabbo, Pagak, Coope, Unyama, Lacor, Jen’Geri and at our hub site in the compound of Caritas, the relief organization, in Gulu. We also supply the network infrastructure and internet access to link up other computers already in use throughout the region, including those in the offices of the Archbishop of Gulu.

These computers lack fancy applications. They cannot play DVDs or 3D games. But they have colour screens, flash memory, can run Microsoft Office applications, and users can explore the web via the broadband link to Gulu. Each computer uses 6–8 watts of power, very low when compared with the 100 watts used by the average computer. The VoIP phone service has been set up with a United States area code, so that international calls are charged at the cheaper US rate. Calls from site to site within Uganda are free as they operate on a separate server and are treated as internal calls. The VoIP provider, VoX Communications, based in Florida, decided to help the project by providing their services at a reduced rate.

The network is flexible and expandable, and is extremely low cost due to the use of 12 volt DC equipment, which uses power over ethernet (PoE) technology. This technology supplies power and data to remote devices in a network via standard, inexpensive cables. Thus the routers, VoIP telephones and even computers don’t need their own separate power supply, reducing the power usage of the whole system and, therefore, a major part of the operating costs.

We believe the project has the potential to provide a communications system that can transform daily activities in the camps, where previously there were few phones and no power. This first phase of the project now connects eight church offices, two clinics and 17 schools within the camps. The network is available for all types of communication needs, including logistics, emergency notifications, teacher training, consultations between clinics and doctors, communicating with US and European donors, and getting out critical information on the LRA’s human rights violations.

With further donations, the existing installation will be extended in two additional phases. The full system will serve approximately 1 million displaced people in a region covering around one third of Uganda. This area extends well beyond the current camps, so as peace spreads across the north of the country, the people there will continue to benefit from the communications and information exchange. We plan to extend the project to 60 of the 104 IDP camps in northern Uganda within the next three years. Once the conflict ends and the people are able to return to their homes, these 60 camps will revert to their original functions as cultural or trading centres

Unique

Some people might ask: why provide internet services when those in the camps have a greater need for need a well? The answer, says Gus Zuehlke, is that if you’ve got internet access you can ask for a well. There are some other obvious benefits too. The people living in the IDP camps now have a communications system that will work in emergency situations, plus they have the chance to contact international humanitarian organizations and the media to inform them of their plight.

But there are many other important applications that will help to improve the lives of people in the area. Tackling illiteracy is one example. Our team provides training for both adults and children in how to use a computer and the internet, how to create and save documents, and how to type. We hold weekly classes in all of these subjects in the camps and at our hub site, and schoolchildren can use the internet to assist them in their studies. Our local administrator has also set up an internal website so that people can practise reading and writing, access tutorials, search the internet and post messages for each other.

As a result of our efforts and the long-term work of other organizations in the area, the level of literacy among the local people has noticeably improved. Farmers are able to access information about improved farming techniques, which has enabled them to increase crop yields, and to market their produce. The internet has also brought access to the latest medical information and counselling, so there is now far greater awareness of HIV/AIDS and methods of prevention. The system also provides communication links between the IDP camps and the various rural hospitals so that people have better access to prompt medical attention.

Some of the people living in the IDP camps are now also making use of web 2.0 technologies. A group of residents in the Pagak camp, for example, have formulated detailed proposals to attract funding for educational and farming projects, and have posted them on the BOSCO website wiki.
There have been other, more substantial benefits as well. The people of the north had been separated not only by distance from Kampala, the country’s administrative centre, but also by the lack of information. In many remote areas newspapers were not available, and there was no phone service. But now, as Fr Joseph Okumo, an Acholi himself and the director of the project in Gulu, says, ‘BOSCO has brought the people closer to their brothers in the south, closer to their government and closer to their parliament. It has brought the schools together and brought us information about our country’.

The BOSCO project is off to a successful start. We have also received inquiries about the possibility of applying it in other parts of the world. The system has been thoroughly tested in Uganda, in as remote an area as anyone could imagine. If it works here, it can work almost anywhere. Funding has remained elusive, however. Numerous foundations have expressed their interest, and money from several international endowments and trusts are in the pipeline. For now though, we are doing our best to provide immediate and effective help on the ground, to encourage the people in the IDP camps to speak for themselves rather than to rely on other people to advocate for them. We promote education and help focus world attention on this urgent situation. We try, in our own small way, to help.
Full article - New window

Our New Newsletter

2008-05-20T00:45:00.010+03:00

Hello everyone! Welcome to our new newsletter. We can all use this space to post updates on the progress of BOSCO, and to reference all past communications and progress.

I am inviting all the board members, as well as Philipp Glaser and Stefan Bock (our local admins in Gulu) as well as Fr. Okumo and also Kevin Adams, who has been of help in the past and remains interested in our project. Thanks Kevin!

This blogger software is very user friendly, and can be easily worked with by all, even the techno-unsavvy, if I may be allowed to make up words as I go along...

I linked the title of this post to our main website as an example, and any of you can do this on any of your posts, if you so choose.

Our newest board member, Kevin Bailey of Notre Dame, has financed via donations his trip to Uganda this summer, where he will work on behalf of BOSCO along with Joe, Philipp and Stefan. His desire to compose a journal is one of the purposes of this new site.

We have also wished to have a weekly/monthly newsletter in order to keep in contact with our recent donors, interested friends, and other NGO's interested in Uganda, as well as expatriate communities such as Acholinet.

You will find your invitations in your email inbox, from "Blogger" asking you to log in to this site as a contributing author. You need only a Google account and a password to do so. I hope you all find this site useful and that we can all use it together, for each other, but also in any way each of us wishes as an individual. There are a world of possibilities.

You can post your own compositions, or post articles, videos, sound files or pictures. You see, in the right hand column, two forms. One is a simple email subscription form, which will notify the user via his inbox every time a new posting has occurred. The other is a "Subscribe options" button, which allows for both email subscription, and for the user to select a newsreader of his choice, if this is his preferred method. As a member of this site, you will receive email updates from FeedBlitz automatically.

As a supplement, I could also use a bulk email list as backup, to inform our disparate group of friends and supporters of updates if we wish to avail ourselves of that option, for example in the case of previous patrons, which we discussed at our last meeting.

Don't forget to make use of the "Spell check" option when posting. Let's spread the word!...T