I had a great personal experience with technology that works last week. My North American colleagues and I were gearing up to host small, personal fund-raising events in our homes in Maine, Toronto, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts last weekend. We are bringing the good news that a group of 35 motivated young African women are just completing their first semester of work in the ground-breaking African Rural University (ARU). (I am a member of the University Council). We wanted to include video interviews with these young women. We only had three days to get the videos made, edited, and uploaded to the Web.
The good news is that with the ARU’s satellite-based Internet connection and ftp, we were able to upload, edit, and pass these clips back and forth until everyone was happy. The amazing thing for all concerned was how easy it was to do. Considering that the university campus is located in an area of subsistence farmers, mud huts, no plumbing, no electricity and with a plethora of tropical diseases, infant mortality and marginal literacy, this small exercise was a great example of the miracles that have been wrought by this dedicated group of Ugandans who have a vision of what life in rural communities can be. You can view the short video here (the click on the “watch the video link” in the picture caption).
These young women are learning how to become community change agents, using a learn-by- doing curriculum that is based on customer-led innovation. For 20 years, the local citizens in this region, with the support of the grassroots-developed Uganda Rural Development and Training (URDT) program, have created the visions of what they wanted to achieve (clean water, sanitation, sustainable agriculture, eco-friendly development, entrepreneurial achievement, more relevant education and appropriate uses of technology) and they have used their own creativity and inventiveness to achieve their desired outcomes.
The small amount of outside funding this program has received has reaped dramatic results. For example, the Girls’ Boarding School, where 240 bright girls from poor families are educated and trained in farming, solar technology, computer literacy and visionary leadership, drama and journalism, along with the 3 Rs, was started with $30,000! Another small grant made it possible for URDT to host the first FM community radio station in Uganda, which reaches four million people who are glued to the educational and provocative programming that tells people how to expose and deal with corruption, domestic violence, HIV/AIDs, gender inequality, and the rights of women and children.
Today, this unique University program for rural African women is being funded by a few of us who are providing the $15,000/month required to get it off the ground. As you think about your year-end donations, I encourage you to consider this option for transforming rural Africa. You can even donate online—look for the link at the bottom right of this page.
RSS 2.0 Feeds
Comments