Volunteering in the dust

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I realise I have not really talked in my blog of the primary reason I am here, to volunteer. This is partly because I can’t quite find an emotional equilibrium on it yet. One moment I am extremely frustrated and despondent, cursing the disorganisation and lack of leadership, the next I full of hope, the organisation appears dynamic, the community comes together and the possibilities seem endless. I thought that this would be a temporary state at the beginning of my work but I’m realising that it is likely to be like this for the duration of my stay.

I did not end up with KIFAD where Lauren is and am instead working for Uganda Youth and Women’s Effort Fighting AIDS (UYWEFA). It was established in 2007 as a community-based organisation by people in Kazo living with HIV/AIDS who wanted to do something about the lack of HIV/AIDS awareness and services within the community.

Initially, the organisation had a successful Music, Dance and Drama group, winning a national award in its first year, and concentrated on providing counselling for people living with HIV/AIDS in the community. Two of the directors, Ronald and Betty, provide training for other counsellors and they managed to train a group of counsellors who they hoped would join the organisation to provide counselling in the community. Volunteer counsellors failed to materialise and an attempt to train another group failed to raise any funds due to the transport costs and someone running off with most of the money.

When I arrived it was difficult to be impressed by the organisation. Most of the activities that they claim to provide; home-based care, counselling and drama I have not yet seen them deliver. Our office is a loan from the LC1 councillor, half a small shed that has boxes of condoms, some files and a couple of training manuals in. Initially, partly drawn by the excitement of an international person, there seemed to be a good group of volunteers to help in our community research. Gradually these have drifted away as they were unprepared to give up their time without even receiving any expenses. The reality of working for an organisation with no funding or resources has also been eye-opening, the cost of making phone calls to organise a meeting, large paper to write on when conducting workshops, printing out a staff timetable or information for the public all have to be covered by people earning very little money (i.e. me or one of the directors).

That it is still operating is a major achievement. Gradually, the strengths of the organisation are becoming apparent. Its ability to bring people together and draw upon support from the community means that programmes can quickly be established when they have something to offer. Recently, organising a testing day in Kazo in partnership with KIFAD (Lauren’s organisation) I feared that the whole thing would fail as we did not have funds for posters, or the most effective Ugandan advertising tool, the megaphone. We spread the word through different contacts though and mustered up some money on the day to let people know and managed to test 150 people.

There is no shortage of ambition either the directors, Ronald, Peter and Betty have told me that they want to set up a school for orphans, vocational training centre, a health centre, a training school for nurses, community health outreach, a microfinance project and a professional drama group. It may not all be as much hot air as I feared either, we have already started registering people for the orphan’s school - my concerns about the fact we have no money to run it have been put to one side for the moment!

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Photos

UYWEFA at work
My boss Ronald in full flow at one of our early community workshops

Comments

[Alison]

thank you
It's so great to read your blog David. Your very honest and full descriptions of details of how things are bring it all to life for us here in the UK. Looking forward to more insightful, funny and profound entries!