Calder High Tailored Project 2008
Uganda2008The Great Generation recently undertook its first project with students from Calder High School. This project took place in Kampala, Uganda in partnership with The Great Generation’s Expert Partner that works on holistic HIV/AIDS treatment and outreach in a very poor slum area of Kampala. Our Expert Partner highlighted the dire hygienic and environmental situation that their clients live in and cited this as the biggest challenge communities face after HIV/AIDS.
With this in mind The Great Generation volunteers were enlisted to help our Expert Partner run an Environmental and Hygiene Awareness week with the aim of involving local people to clean up their communities, raising the level of awareness of the consequences of living in poor environmental and hygiene conditions and enlisting local leaders to lead the solutions for change on these issues.
With a group of 17 year old students from Calder High, and 5 of their teachers, The Great Generation volunteer team worked with our local partner to develop environmental and hygiene messages which they shared through drama, posters, dances, arts and crafts and other fun activities at various different events. The Hygiene and Environmental Awareness week kicked off with a fun and lively parade through the slums and a successful football and netball tournament. These two events were used as an opportunity to bring around 500 local people together to talk about the environmental and hygiene issues in their own communities.
The volunteers were also involved in organising a colourful cultural festival where they performed skits and dances alongside local performers along an environmental theme. For the last 5 days of the awareness week, the volunteers were involved in a variety of different mobilisation activities including community clean ups, getting local people enthused to help clean up their own communities. The volunteers also went into different schools, performing skits, dances and songs and using art work to discuss the environmental and hygienic problems with both primary and high school students.
On the last few days the students went out into one of the poorest and most vulnerable communities and interviewed local people about what solutions they would like to see for their own communities, which was a fascinating and insightful experience for the students. This information will be used by our local partner as a source to refer to for future hygiene and environmental initiatives. The group were highlighted on the Ugandan TV news.
The students had an amazing experience and an estimated 2,000 people have been impacted directly through their efforts.
Feedback from Calder High students:
“… My mobile phone bill, which costs £35 per month, could pay for 4 kids to school for a year … it really really shocked me. People always say that its good to donate money to good causes, but until you’re actually in the situation and you see people … like an old woman looking after a child that isn’t even hers, out of the goodness of your heart … yeah, well it’s pretty amazing...”
“What brought it home to me today was when we met this woman. Eight of her brothers and sisters had died - seven of them from AIDS and one from Cholera. She was looking after 21 children who weren’t even all her own. And when we asked her how many of her children go to school, she was so upset when she said that she could not afford to send her 5 youngest to school.”
“I was amazed at the positivity of the people and their willingness to carry on going. A women we met works a 20 hour day (in the quarry and then making beads in the evening), she sleeps for four hours and then gets up and does it all over again the next day and yet she was so happy and positive.”
“When we asked them where they would like to be in 5 years time, they said “Alive” and that really struck home to me.”
"Experiencing poverty and illness on such a first hand level further motivated me to aim to take a degree and job that would make a difference to the quality of life."
"Eye opening for sure, motivational, utterly different to anything else ever, pretty mind blowing."
"I found the project to be one of the most exciting and interesting things I have done in my life…. I think that I have learnt to fully appreciate what I have."
"Leadership qualities and more assertiveness."
"I have learnt to become much more patient which will help in everyday life. Also I think about what I say before I say it. I have a lot more confidence."
"After this trip I feel this is something I would definitely enjoy doing throughout my life because it has made me a better person and I loved the fact people were grateful for my help."
"Just how much we take our health for granted amongst other things I don't even know how to put into words."
Feedback from our Expert Partner:
"I think it is hard for you to understand what an impact you have had in these communities, but please know that you have! Local leaders have been mobilised, people have been touched."
