Posted by : Lizzie on 26/11/2009 at 16:16

Irimabe! (Good day!)

I have just returned from visiting our youth centre project in Patongo IDP camp in northern Uganda. It wasn't an easy trip but it was so valuable in developing our project there.

As you may have already heard, I went out with Henning Stummel, an architect from Article 25 who is providing all the building expertise we need. His assistance has been invaluable in the past week in reviewing building plans, meeting with contractors and setting up the schedule of work.

I also had the opportunity to sit down with David and Agnes (our partners in Uganda) and discuss the actual delivery of the programmes we will be running from the youth centre and other practical details.

Naturally, the highlight of the visit was meeting the youth of Patongo. We gathered together many of the young people and held a workshop to hear their feedback on the programmes we proposed. Although we have already done a lot of research amongst the youth in Patongo already, we want to make sure to we were incorporating their feedback so in the long term they will be able to take responsibility for the youth centre.

At the end of the workshop, some of the child mothers and the former child soldiers did a few songs and a drama for us. It was really incredibly moving to hear how they felt about their experiences, and they had even written a song welcoming the building of the youth centre, by which point we all had tears welling up in our eyes. In our affluent western society, we can often just hand over our money without really thinking about it, but to these children, it really does make a world of difference, and meeting them, you can really see it in their eyes.