A substantial percentage of any profit we make each year goes to support an overseas project. For the next 3 years, it will be the Equipe project on the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, Uganda. They have 2 projects which I was able to visit this week. Firstly, they have The Bridge of Hope School, a school for orphans and then the Maranatha Gateway Adult Vocational Training Centre.
Upon arrival in the Ssese Islands (after a beautiful 3.5 hr boat crossing), we went straight to the school and even though it was a late Friday evening, some of the children sang for us to welcome us to the island. The school is a basic, one classroom building at present, along with living quarters. It was very humbling and quite emotional to hear the children sing. We were able to bring some money with us for them which will make a huge difference in feeding the children and providing work materials.
Upon arrival in the Ssese Islands (after a beautiful 3.5 hr boat crossing), we went straight to the school and even though it was a late Friday evening, some of the children sang for us to welcome us to the island. The school is a basic, one classroom building at present, along with living quarters. It was very humbling and quite emotional to hear the children sing. We were able to bring some money with us for them which will make a huge difference in feeding the children and providing work materials.
The following day, we went to visit the Adult Vocational Training Centre that is in the process of being built. This will be a 16 person training centre teaching sustainable skills to local over 18 year olds on the island so that they can then get work as labourers, brick layers, farmers, builders etc. The students will live on site as well as undertake the intensive course in the grounds.
The area the charity has rented to set this up is right on the north eastern tip of the main island – Kalangala. It is in a beautiful site which when finished will be fantastic. There are just 3 British people doing all the work and living on site at present with their small holding. They have so far built, or are building, 1 x house, 1 x student sleeping quarters and classroom, 1 x toilet block, 1 x shower block, 1 x kitchen, 1 x chicken coop, 1 x pig pen and cleared a lot of the land. All this has been done by hand over a period of 6 months. It took them actual years to get all the permissions and paperwork sorted – this is Africa!
We took over a large amount of money that we changed on the mainland into Ugandan Shillings (I was actually a millionaire for a while as £1 = 4000 Ugandan Shillings) and presented this to the charity workers just before we left. There were lots of tears and hugs all around as this meant so much to them, so a massive thank you to all those who took part in EW challenges in 2013 to allow us to do this.
We
are looking to run a 2015 expedition to climb Margherita Peak on Mount
Stanley (5,109m), the 3rd highest mountain in Africa, on behalf of these
two projects. If you are interested, please get in touch.
Whilst
in Uganda, I also had the privilege of travelling to Bwindi
Impenetrable Forest on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic
of Congo, close to the Rwandan border. Our group trekked for 6 hours
before tracking to a family of Gorillas. We then spent 1 hour watching
them which was one of the most amazing wildlife experiences of my life
and one I will never forget.
Brian Jackson, Director of Expedition Wise Ltd
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