It's not about You!

We are in Uganda for a short visit, but for a change we have started gently by arriving on Thursday. Friday we had a planning meeting with the team leaders here in Soroti, but it was the Liberation Day public holiday so we weren’t able to do much. Saturday we went to a wedding, Sunday to church and to a swimming pool! Unheard-of relaxation in Soroti. After initial discomfort from our misplaced work ethic, I think this has been good. It gives us a chance to re-acclimatise and recover from the journey, to tune our ears into local accents and rhythms of speech, remember a few words of Ateso and even Uganda Sign Language. And to remember that this trip is not about us. IT’S NOT ABOUT US.

We’re visiting our friends at Global Care here again. Increasingly we are learning to respect them and their knowledge and planning. They understand the culture here and the things that threaten the lives and wellbeing of vulnerable children. They have experience of what works and what doesn’t. We’re very happy to follow their lead, with some guidance from the UK team. We on the other hand, do have some knowledge and skills to share. We understand what is asked of a charity seeking to attract corporate funding in Europe, and how the requirements to evaluate and demonstrate impact can be met, and even used to improve what we do as a charity in the field. We have some knowledge of encouraging participation from groups of people and some IT and business skills to share. So tomorrow we get down to work.

Keep following this and darton2soroti.blogspot to see how we get on with the new disability support group at Abeko, which has now elected its officers, with the old DSG at Atiira, with reviewing the children discharged from the Ark centre for children with disability, tackling the nappy crisis and the dangerous bolts situation, and with working with the managers here to apply for funding for some new initiatives. Looks like being a busy week!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, technical issues. Look on Facebook!