Life in Africa-Global Discussions

Life in Africa Foundation's Redefinition

It has been almost three years now that the Foundation was caught up in community building. It has been a great experience and a few such communities were created, among which is the Kireka LiA. A lot of stumbling was on this path but we managed to get out unwounded and ready to move on again. In one of my post on my blog here: http://ayaaswwworld.blogspot.com/2008/10/renaisance.html , I called it a Renaissance, this means life has been rekindled and we are ready to carry on with the Foundation with the original vision of empowering as many communities here to get connected globally through the internet. We shall be meeting here in this small global village regularly with many other grassroots communities, and our supporters world wide ,to share advices and anything that will help these communities towards their empowerment. Meanwhile everything else will be going on at the LIA USA as usual and the already existing communities whom we are going to continue working with. Once in a while I shall be directing you to my new posts on my blog http://ayaaswwworld.blogspot.com /, which will sometimes be carrying informations on a newly assessed community or any other info that I might have stumbled upon. Lets get ready for this great gathering in our small village here.

Last comment added: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:14:43 PST

CRAFT (S) FOR PRODUCTION, (Order now, with this group, it is made easy and fast with quality)

The war in the Northern Uganda. It because of the fact that, the Rebel leader Konyi wanted to overthrow Museven’s government. It is almost 25 years since konyi the rebel leader joined the bush, all peaceful Means to bring back sanity and peace to northern Uganda by the Religious leader and the Acholi Elders but up to date, the peace treaty is what is being discussed on in order to stop the war of which according to the people over-seeing the peace talks, Kony has no signs of signing the treaty hence living a big question amongst the Ugandan, whether the peace treaty will be signed and when. As result of above, the Acholi people have suffered since they are the most affected by the war. 85% of these people were farmers, growing crops and rearing animals both for sale and home consumption. Due to this war, there were a lot of abductions, young men were forced to join the rebels, the ones who tried to escape were shot dead, women raped and others forced to become rebels wives. Peoples lips were cat, if they found you, they could arrest you and the ask ”do you want to smile forever or shut your mouth “ and if you said yes, then your lips were cat off and if you said no, a padlock was put on your lips.

All their food was taken by the rebels, houses burnt, it was a very dark moment for the Acholi people, they then vacated their land to any place where they could take refuge where the majority ended up in IDP camps like these ones.. image:: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/117545890_ce3e89f1ec_m.jpg. .. image:: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/117541103_e790120ad4_m.jpg... image:: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/5 3/117548000_3a3ef895e4_m.jpg. .. In gulu and in the neighboring towns. The king of Buganda also offered some of them a small land to settle until peace comes back to their land. The land that was offered by the king is a few kilo miters away from the city center, in the place called Banda now called Achili Quarters because of their origin.

After settling for a long time, they formed groups and started income generating activities by making craft one of the tools for fighting poverty and manage their extended families and others in there homes like these ones .. image:: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1 /132041688_b3545da93e.jpg?v=0 The groups have for a long time straggled to sale their crafts. Coming up with a bigger idea of forming a general group called CDI (Community Development Initiative) choose by themselves to handle a number of activities such as Candle wax making, Liquid soap and Vanish but, the only hindrance is financial support. Currently, they are making crafts to move on especial if there was an order made from them who want to help the group, by finding buyers for their crafts, makes them move on with their families and the people in the community. BELOW ARE SOME OF THEIR PICTURES AND FOR SOME OF WHAT THEY DO

Humbly the group is requesting for help, ANY ONE CAN SURPORT THIS GOUP BY. by give them contracts in making craft, -Making an order for any kind of craft, they are believed with the coordination amongst them, they can make anything in as far as craft is concerned. -If you want a specific kid/type of craft you want to de made, they can-Small funds/grants like about us$200 or even us$50 it can still make a difference. in this way you will be supporting this group of the widow, HIV infected, women, men, orphans to change their live and make them know that life has a meaning.

For any kind of help be it what Rendered will highly be accepted and respected and as for us we pray that may God double /increase your income and from where you got.

Last comment added: Tue, 06 May 2008 03:42:01 PDT

I need a football team!

I decided this morning on my way to work that I need a football team to follow, but I don't know anything about them. Should I root for Manchester? Chelsea? Arsenal? Someone else? So my question is, which football team do you support and why? And which ones do you root against, and why?

Enquiring minds need to know!

Laura

There are no comments.

Craft Ideas

Ezra obiga wrote me a PM a while back about ideas for crafts. He also set up a workspace page. I wrote some stuff on that page. Sometimes it get tricky online to understand one another. And often times it's hard to think of ways to know exactly how to help one another. What I wrote on the page was really categories of crafts that I might know something about, or at least seen a page with interesting information about. Really just taking notes to give me something to go back too. Then Ezra sent another PM.

The way I understood the second PM was that he didn't find what I wrote at the workspace helpful. When I was a boy I never liked to ask my father to help with homework; let's say and arithmetic problem. What I wanted was to get the answer, but when I would ask my father it always seemed he'd give me too much information and not just what I needed right at that time.

Ezra was particularly interested in marketing. So what I did was to go to the workspace and remove what I wrote and asked him to put information on that page about crafts he and others were already making.

What I think we need is a this discussion thread so we can talk and get feedback from one another. I also will go ahead and put back what I wrote on the workspace page. The workspaces are nice because member can add to them and change them around. Please share your ideas here and give me feedback so that I can be more helpful.

Also today I was thinking about how to share information. I saw the pictures of candle making and wondered about candle holders. I have an old book 55 New Tin Can Projects This book was written in the 1930's when everyone in America was very poor. I like the book because in the projects he shows how to work with sheet metal in detail using projects made from tin cans. Tin cans today are not quite like they were back then. Something that concerns me is the soldering on new cans, because the steel is generally coated with a plastic coating. I think it would work, but the metal would have to be sanded a little.

My main concern was not the particular project, but the idea of sharing project plans. So I went to the Ugandalinks wiki I made and copied the plans for this project. You can find them here. By the way everyone is invited to add to or edit pages at the wiki. The password is ned4lia.

Something that the wiki allows is for the pages to be saved as PDF files. That's very handy if people want to print the files out. But when I did that from the wiki page, the pictures I'd copied from the book and saved as JPEG files got cut off. I think that often times that feature of the wiki will work fine, it just didn't work this time. So I made a PDF file and added it to the wiki page.

By the way the wiki is not hard to get around in. But sometimes you may not see the table of contents. On the right side of the pages is a box with three tabs at the top. Click on the tab that says Sidebar and it will show a list of the pages on the wiki.

If anyone is curious, I would love it if you look at the page on making the candle holder. I'm interested in your feedback. Again it's not the particular project that's so important, but trying to invent ways to share useful information. Of course if you think the subject is interesting I would be happy to present more from the book. The author is very clever at showing ways to do things and the drawings are quite good.

There are no comments.

Kiva at LiA!

Hello, everyone! My name is Laura Toepfer and I am the new Kiva Fellow working with Life in Africa. Thank you to Peter Ndelo and to everyone who has made me feel very welcome here at the Kampala office. (And hello, Gulu, and LiA USA!) I am still trying to find my way around, and everyone is helping me a great deal. I am beginning to feel at home here.

I will be here until July, working on writing journal entries for those who have received Kiva loans. I will also try to make things with Kiva work more smoothly so that it is easier for LiA to disburse and pay back loans. Kiva has asked all of its Fellows to come up with a training for field partner staff in order for you to be able to use Kiva's resources to the fullest. I will work with the staff here to figure out something that will be helpful. And I have also been asked by Kiva to create some documents behind that you can all refer to. What those documents will be depends upon what you need.

So that is my plan! It may be that there are other things I can do to be helpful as well.

But I have some questions for all of you:

How have you used Kiva up to now? What has worked well? What has been confusing? What would you like to know about Kiva?

Basically, is there anything you would like me to know about LiA and how you have worked with Kiva, whether good or bad. Information about your experiences will be very helpful as I try to make the partnership between Kiva and LiA stronger.

Thank you, and I look forward to meeting all of you!

Yours, Laura

Last comment added: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:00:41 PST

Age,age,aaage..!!!

Ooooh,oh God.! Age,age,age,aaage!!

i have always wondered,why do people like lying about there age?is it really good for one to lie about his/her age?. How can we really fight and stop this system of lieying about the age and build a better world where people talk the truth about there years/age.

may be i need to know something,why do people like lieing about their age?. Please, you are all most welcome to this topic to help and find way in which we can put a stop on this so please your comments are so great and can make a change. So do you think that this act can be stoped? or Would you ever lie about your age?

Last comment added: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:19:49 PST

Study on Child headed households

Hello. My name is Lena and I am a social worker currently doing my Masters degree in Canada. I am interested in Child headed households and I am currently working on two different projects- one looking at finding information from service providers and the next to interview children in this situation. I have begun my first study of service providers and I am looking for people who have worked (or are currently working) with children who are heading their house to answer a few questions in an online questionnaire. This will really help me get some baseline information before heading to Uganda in April. If you are interested in participating in my study, please e-mail me and I can give you some more information and we can get started. It is not a long process-- only a few questions. My e-mail is: athanML11_stcotw@hotmail.com If you know of anyone else who would be a good candidate for this-- please feel free to give them my e-mail address as well.... Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you.

There are no comments.

click4kireka

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR CLICK4AFRICA TEAM? CLICK4KIREKA IS yours :)

WHAT IS ALL ABOUT CLICK4AFRICA?

From 1 Feb through 15 June 2008, Life in Africa USA is challenging teams at two community owned telecenters in Uganda to a click4africa CONTEST to earn financial help with the ongoing costs of keeping their community connected to the Internet.

In addition to monthly connectivity awards the two teams can earn each month, and an investment in computers and connectivity quality upgrades that one team will win in mid June, any Click4Africa participants who are Ugandan citizens can also win monthly prizes and cash awards for leading in the race to earn click4africa points for their team. Whoever you are, you are invited to click4africa too! When you qualify to have your online activity at Ned.com, facebook.com and iGive.com counted toward your favorite team's total, you are helping that team EARN their internet time and WIN investments in connectivity infrastructure at their community center. Non Ugandan participants can also earn bonus donations to their team's internet budget each month, win prizes donated by LiA supporters, and qualify for the opportunity to win a really tremendous prize in the second round of click4africa 2008, during the second half of the year (how about free trip to Uganda?)

Last comment added: Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:04:56 PST

click4gulu

This can be where we share information!

On Facebook I am Linda Nowakowski (Imagine that!)

I have joined everything so that if you need a reference so that we can get the points find me. Add me as a friend (that is one point) and then I will add you as a friend (and that is another!).

Last comment added: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:04:04 PDT

Life in Africa Jobs - Questions and Answers

Life in Africa supports community based organizations in Kampala and Gulu (Uganda) through an active presence online at a number of interactive global community platforms. The organization is currently restructuring to expand the delivery of webbed empowerment services to community based organizations across the East Africa region. In this context, Life in Africa is hiring to fill a number of full time positions in Uganda over the course of 2008. Job descriptions for all advertised posts will be posted at http://lifeinafrica.com/jobs and announced in Uganda through radio.

Life in Africa operates in virtual community environments to keep our global supporters and partners updated on LiA-funded programs and organizational activities. One of the online communities we rely on the most for sharing and discussing operational information is ned.com (where you are now). All employees hired will be expected to communicate regularly using ned.com and other online community platforms as required. The ned.com based application procedure for all advertised Life in Africa positions is designed to assess each applicant's aptitude for learning new online skills, while at the same time collecting information from applicants in a space that staff from Life in Africa Foundation (Uganda), Life in Africa-USA and our WE Centers in Gulu and Kampala can access for evaluation purposes.

IMPORTANT! - Before you can post a question or begin the application procedure, you must join ned.com and the Life in Africa Global group. Please FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY to get started:

Click here to join Ned.com: http://www.ned.com/user/new (you must have an email account to join.)

You will receive an email with a temporary Ned password. When you log in for the first time, we recommend that you click on settings in the green bar at the top of the screen to change your password right away to something you can easily remember.

When you click on settings you will also see a link to edit your profile. Be sure to fill out your profile using your real name, noting Uganda as your location, and including 2-3 sentences introducing yourself to the global Ned community (you do not need to mention your job application in your ned.com profile!)

Click here to join the Life in Africa Global group on ned: http://www.ned.com/group/lia-glo bal/. Once you have joined the Life in Africa Global group, you are ready to start completing the application procedure.

You are highly encouraged to ask questions! Your questions about the application procedure or job description should be posted in the discussion space below.

Any member of the dynamic ned.com community is authorized to help you with the technical part of the application procedure.

Life in Africa staff members Evvy Bryning, Christina Jordan and Grace Ayaa are authorized to answer questions in this space about the job you are applying for. Please note that questions submitted to Life in Africa staff from applicants by email or private message will not be answered.

Welcome to Ned! We look forward to reading your applications, and to answering any questions you may have.

<<<< Go back to the Chief Accountant application page

Last comment added: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:38:17 PDT