Better Lives for Vulnerable People in East Africa

During the last four months your donations have helped Advantage Africa to build ‘Better Lives for Vulnerable People’ through 110 grants to life-changing projects across Kenya and Uganda. And you have enabled our two Programme Managers Rob and Jane to support our 9 partner organisations with the mentoring and technical support that helps ensure those projects have a life-changing and long-lasting impact.

Although we can only provide a few examples of that impact in these short updates, we hope they're an encouragement that your donations really are improving the lives and prospects of vulnerable people.

The 59 out-of education teenagers in Nsonga, Uganda on whom we reported in July are doing well and their number has risen to 79 as brick makers/layers have joined the project. These young people, previously depressed and isolated, have found friendship, renewed hope and purpose as they’re equipped with skills to earn a reliable income. You can see the delight on the faces of these dressmaking trainees!

In a similar initiative, 32 further teenage girls and boys from the rural village of Kyabiiri have recently taken Ugandan Government Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT) assessments after completing their year-long apprenticeships. Achieving DIT certification provides assurance for prospective employers and customers and is an immense confidence boost as the young people start to branch out on their own to earn an income.

In neighbouring Kenya, one of our partner organisations is the Migori Women with Disabilities Group (MWDG) led by two amazing and kind-hearted women, Sheila and Rodah. Their work starkly highlights Advantage Africa’s focus on helping people with extreme and multiple challenges to improve their lives; poverty, disability, poor physical and mental health, exclusion and abuse sometimes all combine in the families they support. With your donations, Sheila and Rhoda are bringing light and love into such difficult situations – which were further compounded recently by catastrophic flooding in the Lake Victoria Basin. Advantage Africa provided 150 people in 30 families made homeless by the disaster with temporary rented rooms, food, cooking equipment, sanitary packs, mattresses, bedding and mosquito nets. We are visiting the families regularly and making plans to help them find permanent and safe housing.

On the other side of the country, in arid Makueni County, your donations helped establish an affordable and safe water supply, now being run by our partner Rescue Team in Kalulini village. This is proving very successful, providing the community with much-needed safe water for drinking, cooking and washing. It is saving families the time of collecting water from distant sources and reducing the incidence of water-related diseases such as typhoid and dysentery.

In the same area, we are working with male boda-boda (motorcycle) taxi drivers in an innovative project to prevent gender-based violence (GBV). The men are enthusiastically participating in the project and inspiring other drivers in the region to be part of the solution to ending GBV. Two convictions for sexual assault have already resulted.

Vocational skills for depressed young people, flood relief for families affected by disability, water for families in marginal lands and justice for victims-survivors of sexual assault. Just four examples of how you are creating ‘Better Lives for Vulnerable People’ by supporting this wide-ranging project. Thank you for making a difference!