Easter Update

The Youth League has been working tirelessly to upgrade one of their most beloved projects; the Divine Mercy Primary and Boarding School. Recently the desks arrived at the school and are looking great. The kids now have the room and ability to work without having to worry about penning and balancing their assignments on their laps. The pharmacy is fully stocked with medical supplies and the library for Divine Mercy is underway. The Youth League is happy to accept donations of books and thanks all those who have made this possible. The library is kept under lock and key in the main office at the school, all supplies are very safe and well kept after. Daos is an amazing instructor and caretaker; he is keeping after the school as best as he can and watching the enrollment grow daily.

Outreach has been going very well. Frank and Kayirra have visited many of the rural villages surrounding the Mukono district. The Youth League traveled to Nagalama Hospital to meet with local families and patients suffering from HIV and AIDS, many fruits were distributed to the children and families to aid them. The Youth League visited Kiwala Village, counseling families and children on HIV and AIDS as well as treatment, the spread, the stigma and prevention and in turn referred many of the relevant cases to local hospitals. It was an incredibly interesting, troubling, touching day for all of us involved.

January, February and March have been very busy months for the brothers as well as the volunteers involved. No day is wasted and important events are coming together seamlessly!!!

Happy Easter to all and speak with you soon.

Divine Mercy Upgrade Programme

In keeping with our policy of continuous improvement we are delighted to announce that when the students return to school in 2008 they will be greeted by upgraded facilities including refurbished classrooms, new desks and a complete set of text books for each subject at every level (P3 - P7).

From Kris and Tim

Our work mainly involved working with P3, P4 and P5 at Divine Mercy School. (The older children had exams). We did maths and/or english and would then go outside for sport and games. (This is our background) At the end of 2 weeks with them at their Speech day we presented the pupils with a certificate of achievement in the “Super Sports Challenge” which was great. (I just did the certificate in word at the Internet Café and they printed it out for me)

We found them to be natural athletes and as you would expect very enthusiastic.

The sort of activities and games we played included:

Over/ Under, Seize the Flag, Stuck in the Mud, Rounders (hadn’t played this before), Soccer (no problem here – mad on it), Throwing and catching with tennis balls, (they especially loved going for the high ones) throwing and catching with big balls and netball, line dancing, obstacle courses involving hoops, skipping, bouncing balls, relays etc.

We bought some equipment while here – ‘Game” at Logogo Mall is good for stuff and big balls are available at the shops in Mukono. There are also a few specialist sports shops in Kampala (Frank and Kayiira can take you) or one in Garden City Mall. Pointless paying a lot of money for equipment though. We stored it in a big white bag and pleased to say apart from one ball getting a puncture and the hoops rather bent out of shape, nothing went missing.

With regard to the english and maths we tried to apply knowledge here and make it practical. They learn by rote so can do a sum if you lay it out for them but are not used to lateral thinking and problem solving.

I did the english and had them speak as much as possible, their reading skills are good but I suspect oral english could be worked on so they develop confidence as well especially when talking with muzungus.

At this stage they only had one text book per class – the teacher would have to write the whole lesson up on the board and the kids copy it down in their exercise books. They loved being able to see the book and read from so we have paid for 8-10 text books per class in the following four subjects - maths, english, social studies and science. They may have to share but this is a vast improvement on the current situation.

We have also started a library with 25 ‘readers’ – they are about 2.500-3,500 SH each so if future volunteers could add to this that would be great. We mainly went for books for the 9+ age group but the P1 and P2s have NO resources whatsoever so helping them would be huge.

We are also embarking on a project to fund some improvements to the school for the start of next year. This will involve filling in the holes in the floor, plaster boarding the rooms and getting desks, among other things. Anyone here in 2008 let us know what has been done!

Our time at Divine Mercy was a fulfilling experience. The teachers were all great. Sebastian can be a bit manic at times and we suspect pretty hard on the kids but all the others were very welcoming. The kids are well disciplined and well mannered, if they grab stuff on occasions it is understandable, if they don’t they may miss out. But they look out for each other, look after the little ones and I think are genuinely happy to have muzungus working with them.

Have a good time – if you want to email me feel free to do so kris.tynan@xtra.co.nz

From Amy and James

During our time one of the main things we did was put together an HIV awareness file for the youth league. It has basic information about staying healthy when HIV+, how HIV is transmitted and how to avoid infection. Please continue to add to the file if at all possible. Kayiira has it.

When we left we had developed a schools outreach program using the file. We were giving talks in the local schools about HIV/AIDS. This involved a short drama on how HIV works in the body. We drew on huge cards about transmission myths and facts, how to avoid infection and how to stay healthy when HIV+. At the end of the talks we would give the cards to the school for them to display. It would be great if this could carry on. (All the info on the talks is in the file)

Please make sure Frank and Kayiira use the file and it is not just kept for show!

We also wrote a proposal for the Belgian embassy asking for money towards the HIV program. If there are any other grants available this proposal can be used for a starting point. It is very detailed so it could be very helpful. Kayiira has a hard copy on CD. (along with a hard copy of the HIV resource file.) NB This has now been submitted as of November 19^th.

We noticed that neither Frank nor Kayiira can use a computer very well. We put them on a computer course with MACRO and it was going very well but as we left it seemed they were not always attending. (There were family issues which stopped them some times however). Try and get them to check their own emails and write their own emails as it will be great practice and it will stop their dependency on volunteers.

The Youth League is a great networking agency. They are very good at meeting the people in the villages and putting them in touch with other organisations. Try and encourage them to keep doing this as it is a huge strength of theirs and I feel they do not realise how much good they are doing. They talk a lot about setting up an internet cafe but neither of them knows about computers, they do not have the money or the man power. It will take them completely away from their strengths.

Over all I want to say The Youth League is a great organisation to work with. Frank, Kayiira and Daos are such warm and friendly people. Make sure Frank and Kayiira know your strengths and if you want to really get stuck in, keep pushing them!

Amy and James

Hi my name is Richard Rix,

I had a great experience and one I recommend as an opportunity that allowed me to make new friends as well as develop my own skills and abilities!

I had a great time and am very grateful to Kayiira, Frank and Deo as well as Denis and all the teachers and students of Divine Mercy for their warm and friendly welcome to Uganda and Mukono.

During my time in Mukono with the Youth League, I taught Maths, English and PE at the Divine Mercy School mainly with years P2 and P3 (the things I taught were agreed with the teachers and headteacher based on the Ugandan curriculum which made it easy for me to fit in and prepare my lessons as I was a novice teacher!). The children were delighted to have me as a teacher and are very enthusiatic, hard working and interested to learn.

I also participated in an outreach day organised by the Youth League to a local school to talk about AIDS prevention and the need for society to help and support AIDS victims.

Otherwise, I also got the opportunity to find out a bit more about what it means and takes to run an NGO by spending time with Kayiira asssisting with funding requests and reading and discussing about the Youth League and its aims and objectives.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable experience, I am lucky to have worked with such a vibrant and ambitions NGO that hopefully will succeed in its goals and objectives!

R. Rix

Hey,

My name is Sandi and I was one of the first volunteers with the Youth League. I really loved this project, although most of the work took some adjustment. Our week pretty much broke down like this:

2 Day’s of teaching at Devine Mercy, 2 days of out reach work and one day of internet work.

The Teaching was a great challenge for me Devine Mercy is an awesome school and I absolutely loved the kids, but the teachers don’t help much and the teaching supplies are pretty much non existent.

Personally I am not a teacher so being in front of a class full of kids was a bit of a change. However the kids are so eager to learn and they will love anything that you decide to share.

I taught mainly the younger kids (P2-3), so language barriers were difficult, but they are fast learners and by the end of my month they were catching on.

The outreach days were always interesting. I really enjoyed walking around the villages and talking to people. We usually spoke to them about HIV/AIDS.

Overall this project is great and if you get involved I know you will love it. Be a self starter and don’t be shy with your ideas. Good Luck!

God Bless!

Sandi

My name is Carolyn Agee and I am from Georgia, USA. I am currently a Social Work major at Asbury College and I was a volunteer with the Youth League in Mukono, Uganda for the month of June 2007. I worked as a teacher in P4/P5 Science and Religion at Divine Mercy Primary School several days a week as well as participated in village outreaches to local communities affected by HIV/AIDS. Most of my time was spent at the school which I really enjoyed. The children are wonderful and very eager to learn. I really appreciated the commitment of the directors as well as the teachers at the school who were very welcoming and patient with me.

The Youth League directors are very enthusiastic about the work they do and have set high goals for themselves in their involvement with the youth and other vulnerable people in the Mukono District. I particularly enjoyed one day when we visited Kwagalakwe Primary School which is another school that they support. The people there were so amazing and had such high spirits and expectations for the children. They sang and danced for us and then the children all lined up to give us gifts - mostly fruit that they had wrapped in banana leaves...it was really sweet. I loved being in Uganda and feel very connected to the people there, I hope the Youth League continues to reach those in need in Mukono and will look forward to hearing about their progress!

Carolyn