I recently had the honor of meeting Peter Boothroyd of the University of British Columbia at a couple of back-to-back conferences on participatory development in Bangkok. At the link you will find contact information for him. I believe he has a grad student and/or colleague who is from Uganda. Anyhow, if he does or not, he is probably one of the most excellent contacts you could make.

What village did you live in Genna?

I'm such an airhead! There are so many useful tools and I don't use them well at all. Still there are useful tools and collaboration certainly can make for better use. My delicious handle is protoslacker scroll down on my tags and you'll see Uganda. Not so many great links there, but I did notice an article about toy trucks that I was looking for in response to Lars in another thread. And yes, BROSDI Busoga Rural Open Source Development Initiative--that's one to check out.

If you use delicious, I'd love to link up with your page. I do think that saving bookmarks is a great way for people to share and remember information. That said, I thought of a couple of links I noted recently and realized I didn't bother to bookmark them at delicious. One is Uganda: language and the internet an article from The East African posted by Sociolingo. And this post about the Ajegunle Project posted on the Kabissa Blog.

There are some really great blogs out there and you are welcome to look at my bloglines feeds. It's hard to pick just one blog, but if blogs are not yet a part of your online activity, I highly recommend Timbuktu Chronicles for a week or two, I feel sure you'll find it useful. Also Global Voices is very worthwhile. I'm not quite sure how I subscribed, but I get a regular update by email of their Sub Saharan Africa round up. Also while I subscribe to many blog feeds I also subscribe to BlogAfrica's feed a Global Voices Project which is recently teamed up with All Africa. Afrigator is another cool blog agrigator.

Actually there are so many media gateways into what Africans are talking about these days, I feel a bit leery of making lists because I know I'll leave really good ones out. Recently I've been reading AfricanPath regularly and check in at African Loft and Pambazuka News.

Genna, do you have a blog? The communities which form around blogs are really cool and the best way is just to join the fray. My very lame blog is Bazungu Bucks.

A while back in response to a request by Christina Jordan for links made a wiki Ugandalinks (click on the sidebar tab to see a table of contents to the pages). You are most welcome to edit the wiki in any way. The password is ned4lia.

Out of curiosity I transfered a few pages from the Uganda Links blog to a Wikimono wiki at Facebook. I haven't really "got" Facebook, but if you're there, Facebook can be a powerful platform for collaboration. So let us know if you actively use Facebook. LOL, but Ned is really easier to use, and I'm not sure why I went off the plantation to make UgandaLinks at PBwiki. For some reason people don't seem to like to collaborate on wikis much, and that seems too bad.

I'm very happy that you've found Ned and have jumped right onboard the collaboration bandwagon. I hope that something in this mess of a post is useful to you--lol if not, there's plenty more where all this has come from :-)

Hi Genna,

I would love to hear about the village you lived in, what took you there for nine months and what you are looking to accomplish.

I'd also love to hear more about these approaches you are asking about. I have been working with Life in Africa for over nine years and we have tried so many different approaches, methods, plans, etc. We may be using the methods you are talking about and I just don't recognize the terminology. So can you expand your thoughts a little more?

I also think if we could know the real village where you lived while in Uganda, it would be alot easier. You know Uganda has a very diverse culture and almost every tribe here have their own ways of life and different needs .So it would really be very helpful to know where you might want this to be accomplished.

Grace Ayaa said:

I also think if we could know the real village where you lived while in Uganda, it would be alot easier. You know Uganda has a very diverse culture and almost every tribe here have their own ways of life and different needs .So it would really be very helpful to know where you might want this to be accomplished.

Hi Grace, the village was Bujagali - towards the end of Ivunamba. The projects now outreach to villages surrounding Mabira Forest, Wairaka, Kizinga, Buwagi, Mayuge, Ivunamba, Masese, Kamuli and villages towards iganga.

Linda Nowakowski said:

I recently had the honor of meeting Peter Boothroyd of the University of British Columbia at a couple of back-to-back conferences on participatory development in Bangkok. At the link you will find contact information for him. I believe he has a grad student and/or colleague who is from Uganda. Anyhow, if he does or not, he is probably one of the most excellent contacts you could make.

Hi Linda - I know it is a very late reply but thank you for the link.

Most things come up here targeting people in the rural villages and after some short period, there project is no where. Its always because the beneficiaries arent involved making thye whole idea be seen as simply meant for those introducing it.

It might be worth looking at our approach for developing young social entrepreneurs from rural villages:

http://www.socialenterpriseugand a.blogspot.com/

Also http://www.socialenterpriseafric a.org and look for "Butterfly North"

Best reference here if you can find it, can be `Robert Chambers; Rural Development: Putting the last first. long-man London, 1983`He teaches much about the best approach.

I am looking for the book! Thanks for the tip!

If its going to those villages, do not stay in their trading or meeting centers There is a need to go deeper on the 'villages of villages' This will give a complete picture.

people at the south afrca branch of http://www.the-hub.net help communities facilitate needs and solutions