OUR WORK IN GULU, UGANDA

St. Andrew’s has been supporting the Cobham Uganda Partnership (CUP) – a community project developed in 2005 as a response to the challenges of Make Poverty History and the Africa Commission. CUP has helped to raise funds to provide a Health Centre at Grace Christian Academy in Gulu, Northern Uganda. This is a school which provides education for over 1,000 children, most of whom have been orphaned by the long running rebel fighting led by the Lord’s resistance Army. CUP is working with African Revival, a Surrey-based charity that has a number of projects in various parts of Africa.

The Health Centre was formally opened in April 2007 by the Deputy Prime Minister of Uganda and by David Taylor of CUP, a member of St Andrew’s. The ceremony was attended by Robert Jenkins, Rector of St. Andrew’s, together with others from St Andrew’s church and members of CUP.

The Health Centre is now fully functional and coming into its own, after its successful inspection and registration with the Local District Council. Grace Christian Academy and the Ministry of Health are now working together to make the Health Centre an immunisation centre for children, serving a catchment area stipulated by the Ministry. This will be a great sustainability effort because the Ministry of Health will then pay the salaries at the Health Centre and for the use the premises. Once parents have brought their children to be immunised here, they will then want to use the Health Centre themselves, thus increasing its patient intake.

The new Health Centre

In this light of this, various clinics have been held to deal with health issues in the school and reaching out to the community in general. An HIV testing clinic was held in October and the results were very encouraging, with only 2 out of the 400 pupils that were tested being HIV positive (these children were tested first as they were considered the most vulnerable to the infection). Medical profiles have also been compiled by the doctor on call on every child at Grace Christian Academy, and the whole school has subsequently been de-wormed. Local and international partners have also been involved with the health centre, and the Kampala Pentecostal Church has given out 500 mosquito nets to pupils, a crucial step in the effort to prevent malaria. At the end of November 2007 the Gulu Hospital, in partnership with Lions Aid Norway, undertook free eye tests on all the GCA children.

The pace of success carries on into 2008. A dental clinic planned for March and a surgical clinic will be held in July that will undertake minor operations such as the removal of cataracts.

St Andrew’s church is continuing to explore ways of giving further support to the work of CUP in Gulu.

Our visit in 2006

In April 2006 Robert Jenkins, Rector of St. Andrew’s, together with Leonard Beighton, churchwarden and Chairman of World Vision UK, and three others from Cobham, spent five days in Gulu. As well as visiting the school to see the site of the proposed Health Centre, the group also made visits to an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp which housed 29,000 people forced to leave their homes because of the fighting. A meeting with the Bishop of Gulu and visits to the Noah Ark shelter for the “night commuters” and street children and a World Vision rehabilitation centre were also part of their programme.

Posted: 25/04/2006

Goats for Uganda

At Harvest Festival Family Worship in 2006 the people of St Andrew’s Church decided to do something a little different. St Andrew’s has a strong connection with Gulu in Uganda and we decided that would ask the congregation for money to buy two goats to help a family in Uganda using the charity Send a Cow. Jo Pittarides drew two beautiful life sized goats, we watched a DVD clip showing how goats can help African families, and Revd Robert Jenkins quizzed the children on things of a goat nature. The quite brilliant news is that we raised £883 - enough money to buy FOURTEEN goats! This means we have been able to help seven families in Uganda.

Posted: 23/10/2006