Kimbuta Rural Development Programme

Many thanks to Jean Brook and the ladies of Frodsham and Helsby Inner Wheel who nominated KRDP as their Overseas Charity this year.

Moira and Gill attended their end of year dinner recently and were presented with a cheque for an impressive £1,500. This donation will be used to support our water projects.

KRDP relies heavily on Sam Watalatsu, the Chairman of Foundation for Development of Needy Communities (FDNC) and his staff, to facilitate our work in Uganda. In recent years it has become clear that their IT equipment was not up to the job and considerable expense was being incurred getting work done in a secretarial bureau. KRDP approached Computers4Africa, a UK charity that provides refurbished computers to community organisations in developing countries. Thanks to their help we were able to deliver two good laptops to FDNC during our visit to Uganda in February. We have also provided a new modem and a document scanner.

During our visit to Uganda in February 2014, Gareth and Dick visited the Rotary Club of Mbale to bring greetings from the Rotary Club of Frodsham and Helsby.

While they were there exchanging international greetings they met a lady who lives not a mile away from us here in Frodsham, Elizabeth Boardman. She works with the Africa Educational Trust to set up libraries in primary schools across Uganda.

As a result of this meeting she visited Butta Primary School and agreed to establish a library there. She heeded a minimum of 1,000 books to do this and we offered to help. We only had five weeks to collect them but were successful with the help of local primary schools and churches around Frodsham. The books were sent and are now in place within the school.

In February of this year 5 of us travelled out to Uganda –  Gareth and Gill, Dick and Moira, and Gareth’s dad Eric, who had celebrated his 90th birthday just a week before we left. This is an age most Ugandans don’t reach, so this was particularly amazing to our friends out there!

We achieved a lot in 10 days – inspecting projects that had recently been completed, discussing possible future projects and gaining a better understanding about how our Uganda partners seek to serve their community by carrying out projects where they are most needed rather than where they would be easy.

This trip will remain in our memories as ‘the flat tyre trip’ since this problem featured rather high on the agenda on several occasions. Fortunately we were never far from a garage where we were able to get things sorted.

The Safe Motherhood Programme comprises 9 outreach clinics bringing health care services to people in remote parts of the community, who would find it hard to travel to Kimtab Clinic. We are delighted to have been given a grant from the Burdett Trust for Nursing, which will allow us to operate the programme for 5 years.