Two Types of Garden in Kampala

Morrish Oceng

MY NAME IS OCENG MORRIS, AGED 15 

ONE OF THE MEMBERS OF BUTTERFLY PROJECT FROM LAMWO DISTRICT NORTHERN UGANDA BUT BASED IN KAMPALA KIREKA  

THIS BLOG IS ABOUT GARDENS IN KAMPALA

GARDEN CITY.

Garden City is the biggest Shopping Centre in Uganda and has quite a number of customers and sellers who  are well trained to manage selling the commodities they sell. They are skilled and they have a lot of  knowledge to calculate the price of the amount of the commodities sold.

Garden City also has a lot  of variety of commodities which are very special and nice looking. What you want you will find in Garden City – at least that is my impression.

GARDEN IN KAMPALA WHERE PEOPLE GROW CROPS 

Here in Kampala we have only a few places where people grow crops because the available land is not enough to grow crops like it is in the village.   One of the places here in Kampala that we have is called KATENDE HARAMBE RURAL URBAN CENTRE.

Katende  Harambe is a privately owned project and formally trained and demonstration centre for sustaining farming practice where people go to get some knowledge on how to grow crops and rear animals. And this garden was designed with  the intention of alleviating hunger and poverty among small-scale  rural and urban farmers in Uganda and neighbouring countries.

OUR MELONS PROJECT

This is a project that we have started in order to alleviate hunger and poverty among the peoples and support the poor, orphans, street, and many after generating the money from it.

This project also helps sustain our project and supports our studies so that we can develop our talent and creativity and also spread our knowledge to other people.

MISSION FOR MELONS PROJECT

OUR  mission about melon project is to provide quality training to the peoples of a community and extensive services to rural and urban communities, small scale farmers and to promote farming good practice.

VISIONS ABOUT MELONS PROJECT 

Our vision about melon project is to promote social transformation of the farmers through sharing agricultural products and training how to plant more crops. And our aim is focus on sustaining the farm production by facilitating the improvement  of agriculture practice.

Unfortunately, many small scale farmers have never considered agriculture as a commercial enterprise.  To this Butterfly Project through melons project has come in to put in place to address the problem through

–proper use of resources

–creating farmer  groups through which farmers are empowered to create supportive farming practice and marketing logistic 

PROBLEMS AFFECTING MELONS FROM THE GARDEN

And addition to that we have some problem which affect melons not to produce a lot of product the problem areas below

–heavy rainfall

–too much sunshine

–pest and disease . like weevils

–weeds etc

And the melon project if it generates a lot of income we will be helping other children who are not going to school because their parent can not manage to pay their school fees and support also farmers from the rural area.

I would like to thank the Butterfly project for introducing us to this kind of thing that we never had before.

You can support the Butterfly Project here.

Young People in Uganda Aim to Eliminate Poverty in Ten Years

This year twelve young people between the ages of 12 and 15 have taken the ambitious step of growing their own crops in a bid to eliminate poverty inUganda.  Melon growing is one of the numerous projects run by The Butterfly Programme, and which has the potential to completely transform the lives of villagers and also create the country’s future leaders.

The Butterfly Programme was devised by social entrepreneurs inNigeria and the UK to empower young people and train them to overcome social problems, including poverty.  The Butterflies come from some of the most impoverished areas in Uganda and have to pass a rigorous selection process to assess their potential to become change makers. Once on the Butterfly programme, they receive free senior school education and specialist entrepreneurial training.

Project member Morrish planting melons

This year the Butterflies have learnt how to grow water melons, which is a high value crop.  They negotiated for the land in the village, prepared it and planted it.  And while they have been attending the Chrysalis School for Young Social Entrepreneurs, a part of the Butterfly Programme, their family members have looked after the crops and harvested them. In future, the extra income will help the families during the dry season.

The Chrysalis School teaches many skills in addition to Uganda’s education curriculum.  The young people also learn about ethics, problem-solving, international studies and activism and practical entrepreneurship.  All the subjects are designed to equip students with the skills for positive action with a social conscience.  During their holidays they are given support to create and implement their own social entrepreneur projects.  These include theatre activities, computer training, HIV/AIDS advice for women and children, sports programmes, and entrepreneurship projects for other children more disadvantaged than themselves.

Francis teaching his runners

“The Butterfly Programme taps into the inherent youthful positive thinking that many young people have,” says Ben Parkinson, Director of Social Enterprise Africa, who founded the project in 2007 with Ashoka Fellow, Emmanuel Nehemiah.  In 2009, Ben started extending the project in Kampala’s slum districts but he located Ssuuna Francis, then 14, in a village he visited in Western Uganda.  Francis is a typical example of a “young changemaker” and has quickly become one of the stars of the programme.   A feature written about him last year in a National Ugandan newspaper describes his work in developing an Athletics Club for boys in the Acholi Quarter slum in Kampala, and his achievements in taking the children to the Stanbic Bank International Fun Run in Kampala earlier this year where they scooped most of the medals.  Ssuuna is passionate about change in his country and writes about his experiences and plans for the future in his blog – https://chrysalisuganda.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/change-is-coming-in-uganda.   One of his plans is to set up a biogas training centre to help children learn how use animal waste to generate gas for cooking.  A second project he titles “Vision for Change” will train other children how to develop a vision for their home community.

The young people are now working on a ten year Poverty Alleviation Plan devised by Social Enterprise Africa with influence from Paul Polak’s “Out of Poverty” bestselling book.  The Plan will expand sustainably each year by selling watermelons to support itself.  In six years the vision is to have a young person from every corner ofUgandaworking on projects that will help to eliminate poverty in their region, and thus throughout the whole country.

“A ten year plan to eliminate poverty inUganda is hugely ambitious,” said Ben, “but these young people have shown an amazing entrepreneurial capacity for projects that have creativity, flair and sustainability at their heart.  They really are proving to be passionate change makers, and I’ve no doubt that they will soon  become respected leaders and role models for their community.  In time they will be the change their country needs.”

You can support this programme at the Social Entrepreneurship site Start Some Good.

Melon update and my projects

My name is Oceng Morrish and I am 15 years old and the oldest student at the Chrysalis School for Young Social Entrepreneurs.  I am in Senior 1.  I am one of the members of the Butterfly Project and I live in a small village in Lamwo district.

I joined the Butterfly Project this year and this project deals with children who are talented and gifted in their life in some way.

All of the members of Butterfly have an individual project and a group project that we are running during weekends and holidays.

Me winning gold for my age group at the Lubowa 5000m Fun Run

ATHLETICS PROJECT

I am an athlete and I was the best in Lamwo District at long jump and high jump last year, so it was easy for me to become involved in Project Circulate, an athletics project started in 2009 by Ssuuna Francis.   This project is about improving  the fitness of children so that they can compete with other children from various parts of the country.   I see some children are not going to school because their parents cannot manage to pay their school fees so I came up with the idea of using this project to help these children get a sponsor which can help them in schooling.  This year I have been responsible for taking the  members of the project to the Mandela Stadium for training and competition.  I have also trained the children at Kyambogo University and Makerere University, where we were able to time the runners.  Some ran very well and got a good time.

I am at the back with the yellow vuvuzela

READING PROJECT.

I have a project I have started to improve the reading skills and knowledge of children, so that when they go to school they will be able to understand their teachers in the  class and master the subjects without forgetting.  In future this will help develop the country and the children’s future as well as making it easy to communicate with other people, like those coming from outside our country.

Perhaps the most important project we have done this year, though is our melon project and this is the one, which we are putting forward in the School Enterprise Challenge.

SUGAR BABY MELON(WATER MELON)

Back in May we sat down together with all of the Butterfly North members and we discussed what we were going to plant to help keep all of us at school next year and what we thought might help our villages develop the most.  We chose water melons, because we had some seeds and because we thought that they would be able to grow in our soils.

We used the internet to find out how to grow and harvest the melons and especially where we should plant them.

Then we came up with ideas of planting the melons in all of our villages and later that month four of us – Nancy, Charles, Joel and me – planted the melons in our home village.  They grew very well and we harvested from Nancy and Charles in September.  During harvest time the weather was very wet, so transport could not get through to my village.  A lot of the melons in Charles and Nancy’s village had also become waterlogged, so a lot of the melons rotted in the field, because they were left standing.  We think we left them too long and so our numbers were below what we expected.  Others did not harvest – Joel’s had not grown so well, as he lives in a place where the soil is not so good.  Unfortunately we could not get a truck through to mine – maybe 500 melons lost.

When we sell them in the market and earn some money that money is going to help in various ways like local children from the quarters can be supported in school, help support the project to be continued and help in buying art materials or story books for my reading project, athletics kit and supporting our study also. These watermelons also develop the village that we plant the melons in because we left a percentage of the seeds in the village in order for them to plant and earn some money.  This may help them to support their children in schooling and other things. The problem we have is that the melons are rotting because of heavy rainfall and maybe pests and disease and we are working with our Director to see how we can improve the next planting.

You can support this programme at the Social Entrepreneurship site Start Some Good.