“Yes Mr Carlsssss!”

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We have been working hard the last few days. We have two big ongoing projects that we have taken responsibility over. The first is as the organization has changed name from Uganda Children’s Hope Foundation to the Giving Circle Africa, then we are launching a new webpage. The UCHF was a Community Based Organization, but the GCA is intended to be a Non Governmental Organization and therefore there has been some restructuring, mainly spearheaded by Ewa and I. So we thought that a new and fresh webpage was a good start. So we are in the process of getting all the content done by the end of the week and then we will have our ‘webpage guy’ set it up. So hopefully we will have it running by the end of next week. The second project involves the registration of some new children that are looking for sponsors. We had 17 children come to the house today, to give us their information and take pictures. These are children from the surrounding community who are in desperate need of help and each of them have heartbreaking stories to tell. So it was an emotionally difficult day; hearing that a 4 year old girl is sick with HIV and that she has no parents and then trying to make her smile for the picture is not easy. In fact it’s not easy to make any of them smile, they are not used to cameras and become very serious as soon as we take it out. Ewa developed a technique though, tickle them and take the picture at the same time. It actually worked!

Despite the work for the organization, I have started my own little project or better said my own little hobby. I have started to teach at the local High School! I’m not acting as a teacher, but more as a guest lecturer. I asked Moses who works with us if he could ask any of the local schools if they were interested in having someone come and talk about entrepreneurship and business creation. I have realized during my time here that people are good at letting money circulate, but they are not that good at ‘creating’ money. So I have actually had one lecture and one seminar with a class of students between the ages of 17 and 21. During my lecture (last Friday) I focused on entrepreneurial skills and role models such as Kamprad and Gates; then I talked about finding ‘Blue Oceans’ in Uganda (new business ideas); and finally how they should formulate these ideas into business models or plans. The students were very quiet during the lecture, probably because the Principal was also there taking notes. But then I gave them some homework to prepare for the seminar (Today). The homework was to go in groups, come up with a ‘Blue Ocean’ idea and finally plan a Sales Pitch that they would give to me, as if I were a foreign investor.

So the seminar today was very interesting. There were three groups with three different ideas. The three ideas were: selling Cheetos, starting a florist franchise and creating a travel agency for tourists. It may sound funny at first but the fact is that in Uganda they don’t have Cheetos, there is no florist franchise or chain and the travel agencies are quite rubbish. So the ideas were quite ok and I did my best to guide them in how they should go forward if they would like to start these businesses. The students were actually very positive with my lecture and feedback and invited 'Mr Carlsss' and Ewa to come to church with them next Sunday. They even sang us a song, which was amazingly good, they have great voices, I think they might sing a lot in church. The Principal was happy as well since he wants me to have another lecture and seminar, this time for over 60 students and teachers 😊

So were are working hard and NOT hardly working!

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