Even private schools need sponsors to support those children that are the most disadvantaged

Most of the world we live in these days is about how people with money exploit those without and my recent read of the “Hole in our Gospel” made illuminating reading, when Rich Stearns stated how the gap between rich countries has moved from 6 times richer to 75 times richer over the last 100 years.  I’m going to quote from his book in forthcoming blogs, but in its simplest terms Rich, who was the CEO of World Vision, is stating how the bible talks more about poverty in its pages than anything else.  The mere fact that we let ourselves become richer while others became poorer is a testament to the fact that Christians have ignored the main thrust of the gospels – “Love Thy Neighbour” – and our world is full of exploitation as a result.

I discovered recently another exploitation in Uganda, which I feel is relevant to anyone sponsoring children into school anywhere around the world, as I am guessing that what is happening in Uganda is happening too in other countries.

99% of children in Uganda are school-focused.  It is the main interesting thing that children have to do in their lives and in general parents will try to make money available for at least one of their children to go to school, all, if they can afford it.  Some parents cannot afford school or choose not to pay and then children become outcasts.  They have nothing to do and spend the time on the streets or they are exploited by their parents as labour for the fields, depending upon where they are located.  Children at school poke fun at children not at school and animosity and shame and other negative issues occur.

In Uganda, there are also people that are rich, just as described in Rich’s book, but over the last few weeks I have discovered that school fees is being used as leverage for what can only be described as slavery, at best servitude.  One young man I know, who is sixteen and top of his class is someone that deserves to be at school.  He is the youngest in his year and has been the top of the class every year during his senior school.  His father died four years ago and, unknown to me, someone stepped in to pay for his school fees, about £80/term three times a year.  That person owns a very large farm and the young man has been labouring on his farm during this last holiday, to pay back the person who has been supporting him through schooling.  I guess that’s allright but what is not allright is that he has been required to work 16 hours per day.  He is sixteen and has been required to move 100kg bags of maize for all of this period.  Now, because I have been advising him to stand up for himself and refuse to do the work, his phone has been taken away, so that it does not accept incoming calls.  The young man has been told that he will be working for the person sponsored and that other options are not available to him.  The carrot was the free school fees, but there was no altruism in the offer, just exploitation.  I want to help this boy, but I feel that serious action needs to be taken now to extract him from this insidious work.

Another recent call I had was to a young woman of a similar age.  She has been offered sponsorship by a Ugandan woman, but she fears taking it on, as she believes rightly or wrongly that the sponsorship is simply a way to get a free housemaid and that she would be prevented from leaving the house and carrying on a normal life.  I suspect that girls all around Uganda are accepting the carrot of free fees, but are then stung by the exploitation.

Lastly, a slightly older boy that I met has finished four years of senior school.  Matthew was bright and capable, but had no means to pay his fees.  He decided to pretend he had the fees and lied to the school, saying that he would pay and they believed him right up until the end.  While clearly he should not have lied, children should not be put into a position by their parents to lie.  Samuel, one of our Butterfly members, who has had an impoverished upbringing and has no sponsor is in a similar position.  He has said that he knows he should not lie, but when there is no money available and will never have any money for school, then what option does he have, if he wishes to go to school?  Samuel is a high integrity person on the Butterfly Project – Universal Primary Education is supposed to spare him this.

So, back to Matthew, who was about 18.  When the school heard he had not the money for fees, they contacted the Police and the Police chased after him.  He confided in a local businessman, who ran a large business in Kampala and this man said that he could help and that he would give Matthew a job.  If he worked for eighteen months for him, then he would pay his school fee bill.  The businessman said he would pay for his transport, medical bills and food – essentially look after him – while he was working, so the young man agreed.

What actually happened was very different.  Matthew did the work for eighteen months, to the best of his ability.  He was not paid, he was not clothed or fed and he became very ill and became starved.  Nor was the school fee bill paid.  Actually, the young man, who has enormous promise as a radio presenter, almost died through the neglect.  Now, after he came to us he returned to the school and is working for free in a shop selling alcohol to pay the school bill, but there is no obvious end point.  My guess is that he will be there until he finds the money to pay the school….

Generally, if people sponsor from outside, either directly to a school or through a respected organisation, then you can be more certain that your money is paying for an education, but you should be aware that the schild you sponsor will not know whether you have paid your sponsorship and that the potential for them to be exploited is high.

As Rich Stearns says in his book, there is little more important than sponsoring children in developing countries.  In some cases, you will pay for education but in others you will prevent a child from entering a life of indenture or servitude too.

Butterfly North back at the Chrysalis Centre

2012 has been a year of exciting developments so far and, thanks to Start Some Good and a number of new sponsors, we have been once again able to run the Butterfly North Programme, a project that takes children from remote rural Kitgum and Lamwo districts in Uganda to day school in Kampala, so that they can utilise their after school time and holidays to train as a social entrepreneur.

The unique programme teaches Ethics, Problem-solving, International Ciizenship and Activism, alongside specialist skills rarely taught in schools – practical ICT, leadership and project management, entrepreneurship, transparency in accountability, farming to alleviate poverty and how to tackle corruption, through integrity and social enterprise.  We are interested in practical teaching, so members learn by actually implementing social projects, not just on the blackboard.

We aim for our members to be catalysts of change in their home communities, galvanising local people to take action to create change, by showing them ways that this has happened around the world.  At the same time, we insist that they are, as children, empowered, not subjugated, developing their capabilities during school and at the same time developing friends where they school that they can empower similarly.

While in Kampala, the Butterfly North members live at the Chrysalis Centre, a building, which is the Centre for activities for children in the nearby Acholi Quarter slum district.  Children come to do drama, art, sports, ICT and much more.  These slum-based children generally have little to do either in holidays or after school, so the Butterfly North members can learn to lead them, while at the same time the children can raise their aspirations from their lives as rubbish-pickers and paraffin-sellers.

Entrepreneurship is also key to what we offer and this year we are running businesses in poultry-rearing with local children.  The money earned will go to those participating children, so they can buy their requirements for school.

During their holidays, the members have been working with their local rural children and last year we supported a programme in Namokora sub-county in Kitgum district, where our members run the same programmes that they have been running under the auspices of the Chrysalis Centre.

This year, I hope blog readers will become familiar with the remote rural Butterfly members at the Chrysalis Centre – Morrish (16), Nancy (15), Nyeko (14) and Francis (16) - and if you have ideas for them, or even would like to Skype with them to discuss their lives and how they might elicit positive change in their communities, then the opportunity is there, while they are at the Chrysalis Centre.  They all speak and understand good English, so language should not be a barrier.

More blogs are coming soon, so if you want to keep in touch with what we are doing, you can follow us on Twitter or on Facebook

We were privileged to be in the presence of legends Bill Gates and Prof Hans Rosling, a statistican and facts animateur who inspired us all and somewhat stole the show with his animated graphics – which you can see for yourself here - which demonstrated the enormous improvements seen in world living standards throughout every country since 1961.  The fastest mover was apparently Thailand, but a more measured improver was Tanzania, near neighbour to Uganda, where the Butterfly Project is based.

While I believe that Prof Rosling is correct – poverty has been severely impacted in my lifetime – the feeling on the ground is often quite different.  His advice was that there has been a wholesale reduction in the births of children per family, but we have seen very little evidence of this in remote rural Uganda, where population is expected to increase by 80% in the next 20 years.  Nor had the remote communities I visited in Rural Nigeria ever been visited by anyone giving advice on birth control, agricultural development or any other form of aid or advice.  Do the facts lie?  I don’t think so, but there is certainly a skew towards those living in urban areas, which often represent the highest concentrations of population.

Bill Gates and some of the Ambassadors

Bill Gates, who I admire very much for his efforts to persuade on the rebalancing of world wealth, focused on two of his current projects – improved strains of cassava, which are disease-resistant, and eradication of polio.  The news on polio is very good, though you could sense the exasperation in his voice at the cost of eradication in these final ten countries, especially Northern Nigeria, where locals have been resistant to the prevention medicine, sometimes, I suspect, exploitatively so.

His focus on cassava is also well-founded, as it is such an important crop to stave off famine and poor weather reduction in productivity.  But as he was speaking, I was thinking that our experience is that some children we know at the Chrysalis Centre don’t really like to eat cassava, some even actively dislike it.  This will be an effective strategy, but I would like to see more work put into reducing the “poverty of experience” that people living in these rural areas have to endure.  Imagine a life of identical food every day, such that it becomes a routine, like washing or digging, not something to look forward to.  Has anyone given thought to the impact of a life of identical days, with no change, nothing to appreciate, no stimulation of the brain, other than perhaps a rural teacher speaking of dubious credentials teaching in local language?

This past year, we have given experience of life to rural children through our Butterfly North Programme and I don’t think any we have worked would feel now that a diet of posho beans and cassava is adequate for children’s development.  While they might tolerate it, new foods are important to encourage the growing of different types of crops and even marketing and entrepreneurial thinking.

This leads onto another area not touched on by Prof Rosling and Bill Gates and I would like to have heard them speak about - the development of vision in rural communities.  There are many opportunities to work in these communities to develop a vision development programme such as the Butterfly Project, which chooses children who are prepared to represent their areas and to help develop confidence and vision in their village areas.  People living in villages simply cannot develop “vision” in their environment, unless they are a freak of nature or, as we are proposing, have stimulating contact with the outside world and a desire to help their communities.

Almost every child has a talent, even if it is simply being good at hula hoops

While rural villages do approach their everday living in slightly different ways, dependent upon their location and sometimes on their local assets, the ability to develop a distinctive uniqueness is not there.  Crops are similar, culture is similar, even dwellings are similar and this is because of a lack of inspiration.  While I agree that eventually this inspiration will come naturally with the elimination of poverty, it seems to me we have we have lost an opportunity to speed the process of development in unique ways, through ignoring the potential within each village to direct its own future.  The talented young people are its future, so why ignore the chance to inspire them, just because we want predictable results from our efforts?  Why not inspire them to assist the change we want?

No one at the gathering yesterday was suggesting that those living in poverty are just numbers for our analyses, so I would like to see much more investment which values these communities for their uniqueness and intrinsic capability.  In other words I would like to see strategies that treat people living in poverty as equals.  If USA children deserve mental stimuli, then so do African children.  If we have a rule on child labour for British children, then the strategies we employ in Africa should also consider these core values.  We know the importance of dance festivals in African communities and how they can inspire positive activity and good relationships.  We know that activities for children – art, football tournaments, games and intellectual activities – can change the life of children almost overnight, as they realise their own potential.

I don’t believe we can develop unique solutions for each village cost effectively, so why not empower them to determine their own desired solutions?  If given a choice and avoid formulaic approaches villages can then choose, when they have a desire to develop forestry or even orchards and will work inspirationally to see these different solutions succeed and the enthusiasm to learn how to put their vision into practice?

So, when we think of poverty, think on the invisible poverty of starvation of stimulation, creativity and inspiration, that we all take for granted and think how you are considering people living in poverty as equals, so they can have the confidence to raise themselves up, not just rely on continuous aid.

In March, the Ambassadors will be available to give the “1.4 Billion Reasons” presentation to anyone interested and I’d be happy to be your presenter, if you are interested in having a presentation in your area – UK only, though!

There is a story about one giraffe that wanted to eat grapes so it went over to the nearest tree but this tree was very tall so it tried picking these grapes but it failed and indeed they looked very ripe and beautiful. When it failed this giraffe stated that these grapes may even be sour but they weren’t and thus that is how Africa has been running and to some point that’s a reason why some Africans are still behind in terms of development. People always want to know where potentials lie and at times say that is meant for the White man with an extraordinary brain but yet potentials lie within us and our brain is no less capable.
If we have the ability to start corruption that means we also have the ability to fight corruption. I always hear people say that if I get the opportunity to fly to Europe I will never come back to Africa and this hurts because we have failed to develop our country and continent.  The Blackman today lacks integrity and some point that’s a reason why countries like Uganda are still languishing behind in terms of development. If we could train the young generation how to value integrity then I believe that Uganda will become equally developed.  Indeed if our leaders had integrity then there would be no corruption.

Philip (15) from the Butterfly Project

The concept behind success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily just like in class the concept behind doing Maths is not to pass but to discover and learn more and even though you made a research in all schools here in Uganda only between 5-10% would tell you that.

I, Mudoko Philip Deweyi, would like to be a person that is an inspirational writer and a public speaker because it’s a passion and a potential that lies within me to take Uganda to another level through my speeches and writings, using the selflessness of social enterprise as my guide. To be precise I believe that “Inspire to aspire before you despise”. Long may social enterprise be part of our development in Uganda.

Philip Deweyi is 15 and a member of the Butterfly Project to develop young social entrepreneurs.

Francis Ssuuna (16) running a group on HIV/AIDS awareness for local Acholi children in March 2011

In 2012, these 20 young people each have one or more projects with a social purpose that they are to deliver which relate to their own personal strengths and capabilities.  Some are doing sports-coaching, some are teaching ICT, some deliver HIV/AIDS awareness, others have a mission to develop self-confidence in other children, by helping them understand their rights.  By becoming a leader in these early years, they develop their own self confidence, which encourages them to explore their own potential more.

To this end, the Butterfly Project offers a range of activities to complement its own training programmes, which are designed to help children discover their own interests and passions.  This could include art, music and sport, but also more esoteric pursuits, like boardgames, writing, entrepreneurship, photography, crafts and film and every member is encouraged to use every method at their disposal, including internet, to broaden their knowledge of the area in which they are interested.

In addition to this, members are trained in personal development skills, such as initiative, creative problem-solving and positive-thinking.  Coupled with this is a foundation of ethical behaviour, which encourages members to share their knowledge, serve their communities and tackle selfishness, corruption, violence against women and human rights.

Charles Obuk (14) working on his play about Streetkids with Instructor John Okot

The rural members are from subsistence farming families and they are learning how to alleviate poverty, through use of drip irrigation and also how to grow higher value crops.  Social Enterprise Africa will then step in to buy products at good market prices and this will help infuse the economy of the whole village over time.  Profits made by Social Enterprise Africa in farming will support the training of these young people, as the aim is to cover all of Uganda over the next five years.  Social Enterprise thus tackles both the training and personal development but is also there for the trading elements, which are required to provide practical long-term solutions.

Every member of the project is encouraged to write a blog, to express their passion for change and Francis Ssuuna, who is now 16 and a member of the project from a remote rural village in Western Uganda, says “I want to run a project to develop the vision of children in the village, so they can develop like I have”. Charles Obuk, who is 14 from Northern Uganda, is concerned about children’s rights: “The right to play, the right to education, the right to medical care, the right to eat and the right of freedom are not well cared about and most of them are neglected and denied children from enjoying them.”  Nancy Lakot, who is 15, wants to bring confidence to children in the village.  She says “Teaching games to others is fun and helps build their self esteem.

Nancy Lakot (14) gathering together local Acholi girls to receive donated clothes from Europe

Ben Parkinson, who devised the project with Ashoka fellow Emmanuel Nehemiah in Northern Nigeria in 2007, suggests that we in the West have been brainwashed about African children, having seen so much coverage of aid and AIDS issues, that we do not give enough credit to the capability and passion that African children have.  “The children on the Butterfly Project have never failed to surprise us and outperform our expectations.  What was a project devised simply to raise the profile of the capability of children living in remote rural areas has become a phenomenon which could change the way that we tackle poverty and the other Millennium Development Goals in Africa – sustainably, from the inside out.”

You can support the project at http://www.socialenterpriseafrica.org/donate

This was Angela, putting her point across about how biofuels would affect her in Northern Nigeria

It is rare to see a blog where children living in African villages can make themselves heard and perhaps even fewer where the youngsters are informed enough to really make an impact with what they are saying.

Very little has changed over the last hundred years in these villages, but for most readers of this blog, we can remember when there were no calculators and digital watches and how far has the world changed since then?

According to UNICEF figures, 70% of adolescents aged 10-19 in Uganda believe a husband is justified in hitting his wife.  20% of girls aged 15-19 are already married or living together with a partner.  In the villages the figure is 52%.  37% of boys are involved in child labour and 12.8% of children die before their fifth birthday.  And of course birthdays are rarely if ever celebrated.  Only 15% of girls attend secondary schools.

So, what do these village children think about their lives, which are so different from our own?

Our work is to find children living in slums and rural villages who have a passion to change their communities and to give them a chance to share their voice with world on this blog.

This girl was putting across to us her views on the importance of music and dance in her village - one of our members set up a project there

This year we are working with international organisations to document the life experience of the children on the project, whether they be from rural or slum locations and train them to become social entrepreneurs that can work with NGOs to create change in Uganda, or simply alleviate poverty with the latest ideas and technologies through their own efforts.

CALL FOR SOCIAL MEDIAVOLUNTEERS

If you have a social network that you can circulate this blog to or you have experience in creating or implementing social media campaigns, we need your help to put across the words of disadvantaged youth in Uganda.  Just send a note to socentafrica at gmail dot com or respond to the blog.  You can also follow us on Twitter

Before you go, perhaps you can take time to read:

Charles, aged 14 - Hearing the Voice of Rural Youth

Gilbert, aged 16 – Healing using music and drama

Joel, aged 14 – Children’s rights in Uganda or

Nancy, aged 15 – I can bring confidence to girls in my village

Francis, aged 16 – Change is coming in Uganda

Some children we talked to about shea nuts - the girl in blue complained about the cutting down of trees in her environment

Peter - here he is cutting the materials for his own hut, where in time he will live and start a family

One wonders at the randomness of international development, when millions of dollars are wasted pussyfooting around government officials, who have already had no compunction about stealing from the poorest people to attain their position of power.  Young people are not born corrupt and most naturally will graduate to doing good until they realise that selfishness is easier and, if you have a nuance of intelligence, then it will allow you to have an edge against others struggling to survive.

Of course, in Africa, this is not the only way to operate and everywhere you look you can find young people with ideas about how they might improve living standards in their community.  My belief is that you must nurture this selflessness, show them others who have had similar ideas to them, link them up with organisations like IDE that offer practical solutions to living in poverty, give them the tools to evolve their vision and this is the main vision of the Butterfly North Project from Social Enterprise Africa CIC.

Peter with children in the village and one of the local village elders

Peter is a normal boy who wants to be a doctor, but has had to struggle to be taught through Primary School.  Now in Senior, the fees are more and out of the range of his mother, who is a war widow.  This year he has been part of the Butterfly North, as he lives in a remote village in Northern Uganda and he has been thinking about how he might set about improving the lives of people in his village, as he grows up.  This is his proposal, which is an example of some of the work done at the Chrysalis Centre and School.  If you want to know how you can help, then write to us here:

MY PLAN TO IMPROVE LIVING STANDARDS IN MY VILLAGE

1^ststep in the process

I will tour around the village and list out the problems I have observed.

Find out the possible solutions to the problem.

Discuss them with the village officials and leaders.

2^ndsteps in the process

Find a place where I will hold the meeting.

Invite the village officials to the meeting

Discuss about the issues to prioritize.

Issue will be about what I have observed and what change I feel like need to be made in the society.

LIST OF THINGS (TOPICS) WE WILL DISCUSS.

The topic for the meeting would be “PLANNING FOR A BETTER FUTURE OF OUR AREA”

This topic will be discuss according to the situation (problems) affecting the village.

From there, the leaders will be appointed and their work will be allocated.

THE ACIVITIES WHICH WOULD BE PRIORITIZE IN THE MEETING.    

1^ST ___HUMAN RIGHTS

2^ND ___CHILD LABOUR

3^RD ___ AGRICULTURE

4^TH ___ POVERTY

5^TH ___AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURES LIKE WATER, UTILITIES,

 HUMAN RIGHTS

This may comprise of children rights, women rights and rights for men. This activity would be prioritize because many women get a lot of abuse from their husbands in the village and some they can be hurt and this is because their husbands overdrink. So I will explain the important of human rights to them and they will also pass the same information to others and they will change.

 CHILD LABOUR

Child labour is giving too much work to children i.e. more than he should do.(energy) and this may affect the health(physically). This will be included because child labor is highly practiced in the rural area. This can be solved by setting laws against child labour.

POVERTY

Poverty is a state of mind. It is cause by lack of knowledge. This is the reason that leads to the increase on the number of street kids in Uganda. If poverty is solved then the society will not have many problems. This can be solved improving on the agricultural sales to generate income.

AGRICULTURE

Agriculture is the growing of crops and rearing of animals. This can be improving by growing of crops which can generate a lot of income. Such crops can include melons, eucalyptus, mahogany etc. when farmers produce the same type of, the market will reduce hence leading to lose or low price.

AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURES LIKE ROADS, WATER, UTILITIES ETC

Poor roads can lead to difficulties in transportation of goods which will affect supply. This can by improving by constructing better roads to the urban areas. If the transport is increase, the demand and supply will be improved.

RISK ASSESSMENT

Eunice found a baby, when we travelled to Lake Nabugabo, near Masaka

Eunice is now 16 and has completed her “O” levels.  She may be quiet on this blog, but that is because she has been concentrating on her exams this year, yet, this year has been also very productive for Eunice on the project.

Of all our members, Eunice is the most talented in music.  She is a Christian and has been singing in the church choir for many years.  Other of our members have musical potential – Peter, Samuel, Gilbert, Charles and others – but Eunice has the real in-built talent, but this has not until recently been a priority of hers.  Eunice lives in Kisenyi, Kampala’s biggest slum district and she lives in perhaps one of the most dangerous parts of the slum.  Her father died a few years ago and Eunice, as the youngest, was left alone to look after her mother, who is unable to find work and thus can earn very little each month and hardly enough to pay the meagre rent on her home in Kisenyi.

Fortunately for Eunice an NGO, MYDEL – Mengo Youth Development Link- had their offices near to where she lived and they were able to support her in the early period after her father died.   MYDEL are a great organisation that does sports and theatre for youth and also now runs an orphanage for children in Nansana.  MYDEL are also important to us, as they have provided us with one of best trainers – Alex Obeki.  So, Eunice learnt much from MYDEL and it may have been them that helped her develop a vision to support the street children of Kisenyi with an orphanage.

Eunice has performed many times now at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala

Here are five of Eunice's 30-strong dance group for

Through MYDEL and her selfless drive to help other children, Eunice has gained supporters from all around the world and she has also worked very hard to keep her free place at Kampala Music School and improve on her flute and keyboard-playing this year.  An orphanage is a tall order for a young person, so she has been working on two social projects, while on the Butterfly Project – one is for girls – music and dance and the other is art for boys, as Eunice is quite a talented artist too and taught Gilbert much of what he knows about shading.

While Eunice needs our support for her family, she has been incredibly self-sufficient on her project and has never requested any financial support for her own work in the community.  She has impressed with her ability to negotiate a rehearsal place and also to compose original material for her singers.Last year she was also one of our three selected members to represent all young people in our part of Kampala on the subject of positive living.Eunice has performed many times now at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala

Whatever path Eunice treads in future, it will not be a selfish one and I believe we should seek out young people, prepared to give of themselves for free and encourage their work.  If you want to be one of these and support Eunice, then write to this email.

Gilbert (left) working with younger artist Oswaldo (right)

Few people who have met Gilbert have not been impacted by him somehow.  He has extraordinary talents in so many artistic ways that you would be hard pressed to say he was a product of the ghetto, which, like all our urban members, he is.

Gilbert can dance, he can sing, he can paint, he can do crafts, he can act, he can present, he can make films, he can write plays and, sometimes, he can write too.

This is the first picture that GIlbert drew with the Butterfly Project, which clearly showed his artistic abilities

The quote above came from Bruno Ruganzu, an esteemed professional artist, who we have worked with at the Chrysalis Centre this past year.  Bruno founded a Ugandan organisation known as EcoArt recently and he has been the winner of many prizes for his art and photography.  He sees the potential with Gilbert, that we saw, when he painted for the first time back in 2009.  Gilbert’s artistic judgement is very strong and these past two years he has evolved his techniques, so that he can paint, use oil pastels, oils and even charcoal.

Sometimes art can be an introspective even selfish thing, but Gilbert has shown he is prepared to use his talent to build on the skills of others, as he led the Bayimba Arts Festival project this year, which included children from 11-18.  You can see some of the art produced for this project here.

One of the Eco-tiles produced by Gilbert to go onto the outside of the Chrysalis Centre in 2010

During the project Gilbert has shown more than anyone his ability to liaise with adults on an equal basis.  He’s demonstrated that by training our youth effectively, we can produce trustworthy, motivated social entrepreneurs, working on small projects right now, but with the drive to work on large projects, as they develop.  Gilbert was born in a Kampala slum and he knows as much as anyone about the negative aspects of

One of Gilbert's bracelet designs

slum living.  As a result, he is able to make good judgements on projects in slum districts, much more than those of us who have not been exposed to slum living.  He demonstrated this through evolving a new system for contacting children on the project, bearing in mind that few have mobile phones to contact and those that do often have them stolen.  He also has the respect of other children on the project, though sometimes begrudging due to his undoubted ability.

One of the projects that most impressed me from Gilbert is his film “We need your attention”.  It’s a very simple message, which is perhaps

Alfred, the star of "We Need your Attention"

more important than any “Children’s Rights” pamphlets, as he simply says “Don’t neglect us, we are important” and he portrays the story of a boy, who becomes upset because his father gives him no time.  Gilbert has used music beautifully in the 5 minute film, using a mixture of indigenous and Western Classical music.  We don’t have the film yet on-line, but perhaps that will come soon.  Gilbert filmed it with a £30 video camera, which was constantly running out of batteries and he learnt how to use Windows Movie Maker on his own, for the editing process.

Lastly, for now, Gilbert has always demonstrated the importance of giving artistic stimulation.  Without this, he would be stepping outside the staple of Ugandan music.  He would not be interested in viewing a whole range of creative films that we show, from Narnia to The Nightmare Before Christmas.  One of the most obvious influences was “Star Wars” and then we watched “The Fifth Element” and Gilbert produced the oil pastel picture you can see below.  For more of his 2010 art, go here.

So, art, music, films all inspire, so why do we not campaign for its use more widely in Africa, as we need inspiration to create positive change?  Gilbert is one of those that we can entrust Uganda’s artistic future to and if you would like to help him, then please write to this email.

Flying Cars