From the 20th of June until the 7th of July, two members of the organization, Eva Valle and Hector Martin, went to Uganda in order to follow the activities that our local partner ¨Uganda Children Centre¨ (UCC) realizes on the benefit of the street-children of Kampala and to prepare the next activities to implement this year.

During this trip, the social workers of UCC (Fred, Roberts, Josephine and Sophia) showed us all the aspects of the problems of the street-children. We met children of the main suburbs of the city, children living in the streets, children placed in centres of rehabilitation by the police, a judge of the Court for Minors and other local associations working with the street-children in order to exchange points of view and experiences.

In the suburbs of Kampala, where the families live under sub-human living conditions, our local partner UCC completes an impressive work of prevention, by making aware the families and the teenagers of the importance of hygienic living conditions, the ways of transmission of the most common diseases (malaria, tuberculosis) and particularly to AIDS, the importance of education, etc... This action of prevention is extremely important because the children living in these suburbs finish most of the time in the streets if they are not helped. In fact, although primary school is free in Uganda, the children very often cannot go to school since the families are very poor and cannot afford the costs of transport, books, uniforms…Therefore, they idle all the day in the suburbs, the boys taking drugs most of the time and the girls doing prostitution to try to survive.

The role of UCC for these children is also very important since the social workers look for them in the streets in order to listen to them and advise them about other alternatives to life on the streets. The majority of the children that we met were taking drugs, mostly inhaling petrol, presented serious wounds or seemed sick..

Street-children sleep in the drain-pipes.

Moreover, we visited other local associations working in favour of street-children in order to exchange points of view and experiences. For example, we visited the Ugandan organization “Kids in Needs”, whose aim is to promote the rights of the children and has two centres where one hundred children can have a place to sleep, education and food.

Finally, we organized in the office of UCC a big meeting in which all the children were talked about the projects of the organization. We could enjoy of a dance presented by the children of Katwe and the women of the slum of Katwe prepared a big and traditional Ugandan meal, for more than 80 children coming from the two main slums, children living in the streets and members of the local communities present. We took the opportunity to distribute to the children the clothes, soap and toys that we brought from Belgium. The children were really happy!

Ultimately, we could establish with our local partner the new activities to be implemented this year, like workshops of education to health, alphabetisation, vocational training and many recreational and sporting activities aimed at improving the social and individual development of the children. More information about these activities will be included in the web site of the association shortly.

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From the 2nd to the 5th October included, you will be able to see all the photographs of this trip in an exhibition which will be organized in the Centre ¨Pablo Iglesias¨ in Brussels (Rue Ropsy Chaudron 7, Anderlecht, Clémenceau Subway). During this time, you will be able to buy many handicrafts and paintings of Ugandan artists brought from Uganda, for the benefit of the activities to be implemented this year.