Support food security & Livelihood of 1000 Ugandan

We have received some rainfalls and some relief from drought. Our team has been planting vegetables nearly every day and we travelled to the field on two occasions for extended vegetable and crop planting. With our handy project officials, multiple days were spent working with other semi-nomadic pastoralist communities to implement vegetable, crop planting and water conservation projects. What an incredibly positive experience! Our Pebac team members found it meaningful to share their expertise with communities of Karamoja Uganda and to receive so much gratitude and positive feedback. These field work and travels were truly motivating. Currently, the team is planting many vegetables like cabbage, greens, tomatoes and crops. Vegetables grow fast and they can be a source of food and income, they are also among the hardiest to plant since karamoja is always dry. They have thrived and continued to produce nutritious crops through intense and prolonged droughts too harsh for many food producing species. One of the places where planting is taking place is in a kotido where we planted vegetables about four months ago. Those vegetables have grown into some of the most productive that we have planted so far. We are so grateful to be able to provide essential, life-saving services during these food crises in karamoja. We couldn’t do it without your support; THANK YOU! A special thanks to everyone who donated on GivingTuesday! We are so grateful for your support. And thank you to GlobalGiving for the endless support, resources, and opportunities that help us do our work.

It has been raining here in Karamoja region and the rest of the other regions in Uganda, we have had the biggest rainfall in two years.  It provided enough water to fill the catchment ponds which hadn’t happened since the beginning of this drought.  Although it’s now been a couple of weeks since the rainfall, all of the surrounding vegetation is still green.  We’re making sure to savour this scenery knowing that that amount of rain will not likely happen again soon; the forecast predicts below average precipitation for the remainder of the year.  Nevertheless, we know that with the help of our maize, and sorghum seeds we can keep moving forward with planting food. 

We have long been looking forward to planting maize, sorghum and providing training in more remote communities, but the hardships of the recent years made the expansion of our services extremely challenging.  However, we recently scouted locations for future food projects and made encouraging connections with numerous communities as far away as Mountain Moroto in the Far East of Uganda.  Several of these locations have the potential to become highly productive food in that they are unique micro-climates nestled in rainy mountain valleys, like oases surrounded by desert.  Other regions we visited are suffering from debilitating arid conditions where we will focus on designing intense water conservation systems and planting small and productive food for them and their animals because Karamoja is a cattle corridor.  We are keen on catering each project to the needs of the people where they live.  Our goal is to begin collaboration before the end of the year.

Thank you to all of our volunteers, donors, and everyone at GlobalGiving!  If you would like to provide feedback or learn more about our projects, or if you are interested in volunteering with us, please email us at pebaclimited@gmail.com. There is also an opportunity to leave a note at the end of this report.

Thank you very much.

PeninahProject Manager!