Thursday, May 21, 2009

News from Uganda

Kate Parry writes:

Some good news. I’ve recently met two young men who have already launched library projects. The first is David Ssemwogerere, who heard about us through Mukhobeh Moses of the Randa Farmers Library. He runs an NGO called D+ (Development Plus) Uganda, which has teamed up with an Australian group called HUG (Help Us Grow -- www.hug.or.au) to establish the Suubi Community Centre, which does all sorts of things but includes a library, at Lubanda village in Kisekka sub-county in Masaka District (one of my relatives lives in that sub-county). The second is Simon Mugabi, a friend of David’s, who is working for Unicef at present in Kenya but is coming home at the end of this year and is well ahead with plans for establishing a Community Empowerment and Development Centre (including a library) at Lwampanga trading centre in Nakasongola District. He, too, has support from abroad – in this case from an American woman named Lori Peacock, who has set up a not-for-profit called Nziza (www.nziza.org) to work in Rwanda and Uganda. Both of them are eager to join UgCLA and have already paid their subscriptions! I’ve sent David the application form and will send Simon his now. I’ve also been in correspondence with Helen Brown, or HUG and hope to meet her when she comes to Uganda next month; and I will write to Lori Peacock to suggest she work with both FAVL and Ready to Read, which is the organization set up by my friend who’s working on libraries in Rwanda. Both David and Simon seem to be very able and experienced and will I’m sure be good contacts for us, as Board members, perhaps, in future, and as facilitators of workshops. So, Grace, expect their application forms, and remind me to give you the 40,000/=.

Simon’s CEDC is library member number 28, Ggaba is still in line to join (Mary is just raising the money from library subscriptions), and we still have all those libraries in Toro lining up (I’ll be writing to them soon). So I’m sure we will have more than 30 libraries by the end of the year.

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