Working to Empower

In Jan./08 I started talking with a film maker about the possibility of creating a documentary on WTE and the wonderful partners that do all the hard work to make their communities a better place. It seems as though this will become reality as I have booked a flight to return to Uganda in June with the film maker and we will visit two parters there as well as a partner in DR Congo and one in Tanzania. This has all come as great news for WTE and we are still connecting with our partners to make this project a reality. WTE did not have funding for this, so if anyone happens to know any donors who would be interested to support this documentary effort please have them contact WTE.

In December of 2007 Working To Empower started to share educational materials with organizations in a network. Each week the organization would send out one educational material. The project started with six partners and English-only materials. A little over a year later this resource sharing network has over six-hundred organizations signed up to receive educational materials. In addition, we created over 70 educational materials that are being translated into twenty-six languages. This project really has expanded well beyond the hope we originally had and the feedback has been amazing. WTE is really proud to report on this project, which would not have been possible without the hundreds and hundreds of hours given to us by our wonderful volunteer team.

This week WTE owes thanks to the Vancouver Montessori school who raised $1200 for the Emebet Education Program in northern Uganda. This will ensure that the additional students for 2008 will attend school, as we had hoped. The fundraiser is the single largest one-day event held by a school – congratulations, and thank you!

WTE is off to a quick start.

Thanks to some wonderful volunteers our website is moving quickly in new and exciting directions. Our resource page grows by the week! A big thanks to those volunteers helping to create and translate those materials too!!

The Emebet Education Program is off to a huge start. Back in October WTE added more students to the Tanzanian program working in Nyragusu refugee camp. All those students are attending secondary school. A new program has just started with twenty new primary students in Kampala (Uganda), while the northern Uganda program has doubled in size this year – we are putting orphaned girls into boarding school because there are no secondary schools where they live. All those fees have been paid thanks to all you wonderful donors and volunteers!

WTE’s resource sharing program has spread to over 40 countries and we send out weekly materials to hundreds of organizations – with 26 languages in translation!

Our hard-working peer educators in refugee camps are continuing their educational efforts – teaching their communities about HIV. This year the Nyragusu team in that Tanzanian refugee camp got bikes so they could cover more area and they have also printed a large quantity of educational material for distribution in local languages. In Benin the United Nations continued to support our peer educators as well.

We have raised almost ¾’s of the money we set a goal for in our Ethiopian project – a children’s home for orphans living with HIV/AIDS.

WTE started up a new project in Cameroon this past year and that project is training peer educators and is also running strong.

Thank you donors, volunteers, and most of all the local people making all these projects run so well.

Logan

Once again I apologize for the delay. WTE’s role here in Ethiopia is somewhat small, we are mostly just a funder and I am working to support the local organization in any and every way that I can – that includes taking care of the kids to writing grant proposals. WTE is moving along though. We are supporting a project in Cameroon that will create a team of female peer educators (we are one of a few funder for that large project). They asked for WTE to supply the core trainer but the cross-Africa flight was out of my personal budget so we couldn’t fill that need, but we are supporting that project financially. It will run for a year starting this coming month. Following that we are in talks with an organization from Mozambique where we hope to work with people who are living with HIV/AIDS and have a train the trainers program for community education. Of course all this takes money so I am searching for ways to find funding – I’ll also come back to Canada this winter (where I’ll speak and hold some events) to help WTE move along.

I uploaded some videos to YouTube (also viewable via the WTE website) make sure to check those out!

All the best,
Logan

Greetings,

Our northern Ugandan program has closed up and now I am on the move back to Ethiopia in a rather long route. Since there is no good overland travel via Sudan, I am traveling first south to Kampala (one day), then East to Nairobi (one day), then north to Moyale at the Ethiopian boarder (one day), then north to Dila (one day), and finally north to Addis Ababa (one more day). So … Just thought I’d let you all know about my movements, and they are many as this journey will take many days (but is much cheaper than a flight).

All the best,
Logan

Greetings,

For those of you who have been following me for a couple years (maybe there is one?), you’ll recall last year when I was in Agoro (northern Uganda) there was a cholera outbreak that killed 900, well it has again emerged and we are really needing to take care. One of our team members doing an internship just left and the other who is doing some Masters’ work probably has Typhoid. I somehow never seem to get sick, which is really unbelievable since the WTE member who currently has Typhoid just got over Malaria. I’ve not had anything in two years, working in high prevalence malaria zones, cholera, typhoid, the list going on. Anyways, I am going back to the camps, this time Potika, an IDP camp in the region of Agoro (where we just finished). Same program – for those who send me emails, it will be at least two weeks until I respond.

All the best,
Logan

Sorry once again for the long delay between writing, this time I have some small excuse, that is because for the last few weeks I’ve been in Agoro IDP camp where there is no power or internet. I am back in Kitgum town for a week, will go down to Kampala to get my new passport and Ugandan Visa then will return to the north. WTE will run another program in Potika IDP camp. We are working on our survey results to see how much impact the program had. The girls in the EEP sponsorship program are doing well, they’ve begun their 2nd term and are happy. Kevine is still needing medical attention but she is doing much better. WTE has selected six more orphaned girls who will begin secondary boarding school next year … so we are searching for sponsors for the 2008 year. My laptop cord broke and so I have no access to my computer for the time being, due to that I am back to internet café messages: short and sweet. All the best to those at home. In the last two weeks our program worked with almost 7000 people in a camp of 10,575 people, over half of which are children and so we did a pretty good job at coverage. We are now checking to see if there was an increase in knowledge and behavior change with our surveys and monitoring via the clinic on increases of condom requested (already up) and trying to arrange for VCT in the camp – the latter being very difficult.

Ciao,
Logan

Hello from northern Uganda! In the last week or so we have done some assessment work (meeting with NGO’s, others in the field, taking a survey of one camp) and are now gathering resources for the projects we hope to do. We’ve also spent a lot of time with the girls whom WTE is sponsoring to attend boarding school. We bought them tons of new things from shoes to pencils and everything in-between. All but one have returned to the camp for their three-week break, the one who has remained is staying with us and is in need of surgery. I took her last week for the consultation and yesterday for the work. The injury occurred about a year ago when she was working in the fields and her foot was sliced by a machete, this was never healed and looked to have become infected. The doctors thus cut all that off (she is luck to still have her foot). This past night I sat up with her and she was in great pain – probably as much as when she got the original injury. Anyways, we are going back to the hospital today and soon I’ll move down south to Kampala to pick up Drew. When we are all here we’ll move into the camp, where we’ll stay for a couple weeks. So, all is well. I have taken another father figure role, but this time am “uncle.” I hope all is well at home. Thank you for those who have helped WTE sponsor these children, surely they are more than thankful. Their host families from the camps say “we have never seen something so nice for these girls” and they are so happy to see them get to go to school. If someone might be interested the sponsorship for northern Uganda the fees are $240 per year ($20/month). Our criteria is orphaned girls completed their primary education, who will move into a boarding school in the city (boarding, meals, and fees included). WTE will never meet the needs as our local partner CBO (community based organization) has a list of over 500 orphans, if we can add a few more students each year that will be wonderful. We can help them reach their dreams, which are things such as becoming a nurse or a teacher. Forgive me for going on like a World Vision ad. Thanks again to our supporters.

Logan