Better Lives for Vulnerable People in East Africa

Since our last report in March, Advantage Africa has been working hard with communities across Kenya and Uganda to fulfil our goal of ‘Better Lives for Vulnerable People’. Your donations helped provide 91 grants of £41 to £7,762 across a range of life-changing initiatives including education, health, incomes and disaster relief. It also enabled our small team to support and mentor the staff of our nine local partner organisations.

One of these partners is the Single Parents Association of Uganda, whose four-strong team have been working towards ‘Better Lives’ in the lakeside village of Nsonga, Uganda since the start of the year. So far the work has included the construction of a new borehole to provide safe water, public toilets to improve sanitation and complementary health training to promote hygiene and reduce the spread of faecal-oral disease.

Situated close to Lake Victoria where mosquitoes breed prolifically, means malaria is another endemic cause of ill health in Nsonga. Your support has enabled us to address this need by providing 121 families with comprehensive training in preventing malaria, and treated mosquito nets. The lively training from expert trainer Doctor Solomon addressed the many myths around the causes of malaria and ways to prevent it. Participants were refreshed with cakes and cold bottles of water as they talked freely together and learned from the Doctor and each other. The participants subsequently fixed the life-saving nets in their homes and are now using them nightly. A significant reduction of malaria cases in the village has already resulted.

Many young people in Uganda have been facing a bleak future after they were forced out of education and into poverty due to schools and colleges closing for two whole years during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since March we have supported 59 such young people in Nsonga to undertake three days per week of vocational training from local experts in trades of their choice. These include motorcycle mechanics, welding, tailoring and hairdressing. These enterprises are always in demand in Uganda, and will equip them to earn a reliable income for life. Learning and practising their new skills together, the trainees are finding friendship, new hope and purpose. With the help of their respective trainers they are all working towards achieving the Uganda Government’s Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT) certificate, which will confirm the skills they have attained and help them to secure clients and future employment.

These few examples show how our work in Nsonga is wide-ranging and holistic in line with the similar wide-ranging nature of this GlobalGiving project. Such breadth gives us the flexibility to pay for things from your donations such as an old motorcycle for the mechanic trainees to work on and daily fares for them to attend training that aren’t met by Advantage Africa’s grant funding. We’re so grateful to you for supporting this project and enabling us to use your kind donations where most needed. Your generosity and trust is enabling vulnerable people in places like Nsonga to improve their health, education and incomes, and ultimately attain ‘Better Lives’ and hope for the future.