So here we are again - back from our latest trip to Uganda! As you probably know, we spent two weeks (from October 19th until November 1st) in this beautiful country and were - once again! - overwhelmed by the friendliness and hospitality of the Ugandan people.
Above all, we have to thank the wonderful team of Projekthilfe Uganda (http://www.projekthilfe-uganda.de) who allowed us to stay in their guesthouse in Kyamulibwa and supported us in every possible way. Thank you so much, guys!
During our stay, we went on several field trips to meet with women’s groups and to distribute our players among them. As we had visited most of them before in April of this year already, they were anxiously waiting to receive our players. It was great to see their joy and appreciation when they finally had them in their hands! Our founder Marcel gave them a thorough introduction how to use them (assisted by one of Projekthilfe Uganda staff members translating, of course). We are looking forward to collecting their feedback and use stories in the upcoming months!
We could also establish a nice little Audiopedia spinoff project in Holy Family Secondary School, one of the schools supported by Projekthilfe Uganda in Kyamulibwa. We managed to install both a curated version of our Audiopedia contents (named Audiopedia for Schools) as well as the WIKIPEDIA FOR SCHOOLS contents on the local computer network for the students. The school has a little computer lab at its disposal, however, there is no internet access available. Thanks to a local server installation, the students can now browse not only our Audiopesdia contents, but also explore a selection of about 6000 articles from Wikipedia that matches the UK National Curriculum in topics like Art, Geography, History, Mathematics, Science, Music and many more. They’ll love it!
Soon we’ll be telling you more about another very important spinoff project we could organize in Kyamulibwa this time: a two-days workshop for women and girls about menstrual hygiene management. Did you know that girls in African countries use to miss out on average 4 school days a month only because in most rural regions there are no menstrual pads or sanitary tampons available? And even if they are - in bigger cities like Kampala for instance - most women and girls cannot afford to buy them. In our workshop, the teachers not only attacked many of the rural superstitions about female menstruation (did you know for example that in Uganda a woman is not supposed to walk over a crossroad during her menstrual period?). The participating girls and women also learned how to make their own reusable sanitary pads. They were so thrilled and eager working on them, you should have seen their smiling faces! We counted on 50 participants and ended up with 104 … but you will read more about this workshop soon and see some pictures, promise.