:Author:   Wilfried van der Veen
:Date:     Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:19:35 PST

David Bale said:

    Wilfried, this sounds an interesting development.  Can you tell us more about the Eco-Camp?  What progress has been made in planning and building this?

Hi David, sorry for replying late, we are on a very slow internet connection (via telephone line) and sometimes it just get blocked. 
The development of the eco-camp and training  center is a long story. With the help of Christina I have started a blog with some background and developments of Amasiko.
http://amasiko.blogspot.com/

The whole idea started some two years ago. Some people in the Netherlands wanted to donated and asked a business plan with total investments spread over five years. I prepared one and it came to an incredible amount. For many reasons I was not happy with their approach. Actually I prefer that such a place grows organically, step by step, without creating a lot of envy (which is one of the major thing hindering development in Africa).
I also prepared a project proposal based on a format for the Dutch embassy. It was found to be perfectly fundable, but the diplomats decided that from this year onwards all funds have to go to Northern Uganda!
This proposal had almost all potential developments included based on pro-formas and architects calculations. it totalled to Euro 58.000/= Again a total picture with all possible agricultural enterprises, cottages, restaurant, seminar hall, dorms for students.
Again too much to implement at once, but feasible if the embassy had accepted.
In the last two years we have bought 12 plots, totalling to slightly more than a ha on the tip of a peninsula. There are three mud and wattle houses.
we have employed a young lady as farm manager, who has made some good gardens and takes care of some animals.
The plans for next year is to buy one piece of land offered to us by a neighbour, develop demonstrations of erosion control on it, and develop the sit such that visitors can come for camping. One local house will become a simple kitchen, one remains for staff and the other one I  will use
myself. We want to buy some tents and construct a wooden house in the small forest. (log hut) Further we need to construct a chicken house and goat shed, water tank, jetty for access to the lake for swimming.
The expected loan will get us started, such that visitors can come for camping.Hopefully this will generate enough funds to cover operational costs and to allow us to start some simple training of surrounding communities. Meanwhile we want to continue fund-raising!. I hope that your question is a bit answered, but please feel free to ask more!