The Langeti Project, Our Plan

In this page, we analyse the situation, future plans and challenges of our project, which responds to the strategi Cooperative Growth - Uganda set as its own

1. Status Of The Projects

These are the major schools associated with us, bringing to us circa 50 students:

• Moyo Army PS

• Moyo Town Council PS

• Father Bilbao PS

• Moyo Girls PS

• Moyo Senior SS

The music school is catching up and the Maduga Band is ready to play, but still with a lot of room for improvement. We can happily say Vura Music managed to create an environment on which both boys and girls feel home and belong. Both boys and girls fully accepted the roles and responsibilities assumed by girls and feel it already as a natural thing.

From 2014 to 2018, the music project was relying on expatriate volunteers, coming mostly from Spain and under calls done by our Spanish partner, Solidarios con Arua – Arua Elkartasuna NGO. They would be responsible for developing the lessons and training the students. From the year 2019 to the present, lessons now fully rely on locally trained teachers, emerging from the project itself, thanks to the continuous support by the expatriate volunteers. Despite these local teachers still lack a lot of skills to be fully independent, we send them periodically for training within Uganda. Also, though we don’t make calls anymore through our partner, we still receive regular visits by volunteers who know about our project thanks to the sensitization done by Solidarios con Arua.

Despite being a very young project and having had a number of challenges (most importantly the wrong choice on the project coordinator), it is moving on very well and it is already referential in Moyo District. We are even beyond the capacity originally projected and are about to get a new therapist to be able of increasing the number of beneficiaries. Yet, with the addition of this worker, we would still be having some major challenges:

• The facilities we are currently using, originally design to host music and other artistic activities, are hosting the project very well, yet they will not be enough to accommodate more participants.

• The rampant needs of some of the families cannot be well satisfied without increasing the budget. Many of them need assisting devices and nutritional supplements, something not yet contemplated in the budget.

• Reaching some of the families means going to their homes, which also implicates a significative increase of the budget.

• Hiring of the specific personnel: Some of the members participated as volunteers in the process of building the proposal and thereafter became hired personnel of it. Others where hired in an open process held in February 2022.

• Identification and acquisition of land for a Demonstration Farm: Located in Toloro, in Nyoko village.

• Connection to National Water

• Construction of a store, latrine and fence: Currently on its final stage, about to be officially handed over to the NGO

• Construction of a nursery bed/screen house

• Plantation of trees for demarcation and strategic shades

• Plantation of the crops for the first season ever of the farm

The main conclusions would be documented at the end of the year 2022 and will become guide for further experiences. We are finding it challenging to convince the local farmers that organic agriculture is as productive as inorganic, but we didn’t yet have time to proof it through our demonstration farm and people only believe on what they see. We still need more time to proof our organic ways work. What it is now a days sure is that we don’t have funding nor prospects for the year 2023 and, in their absence, this could be a single year project with minimal impact. We are trying to identify potential sources, but so far we have no serious candidates.

2. Future Plans

The 2022-2027 period is the most ambitious one for our NGO. After many years of one single project, we are suddenly trying to handle three and of a very different kind. Also, the annual budget passed very quickly from less than 80 million Ugandan Shillings to figures that easily pass 400 million. To be able of adequately manage the funding, the NGO also had to hire more and more dedicated personnel, specially concerning the position of Administration and Finance Officer.

a) Bilinyo Cultural Centre: To the already existing Arts School, two new building would be added:

a.1) Centre for children with disabilities: This construction is already undergoing and it is expected to be completed by June 2023

a.2) Exhibition Centre: A space for leisure, with a setup designed to host our own exhibitions, in terms of music, crafts and other traditional or non traditional cultural products. This project already received the necessary funding and will be completed before the end of the year 2023

a.3) Guest House: Our NGO often hosts volunteers of different specialties and counting on proper accommodation for them will reduce our costs and will generate a better environment for the expatriate visitors.

b) Toloro Demonstration Farm: 

b.1) Cottage factory: The las of the construction projects we are aiming at, this cottage factory should be a step forward on Ruddu Hwe, with a significant improvement on the food security of the Moyo population. This plant would have the capacity of processing a tone of vegetables or fruits per day. Among all the construction projects, this is the one with less certainty of completion at the moment. If the funding lines are well secured, should be completed by mid 2024.

1. Physiotherapy services: We currently offer this services to children with special needs, but after the construction of the Centre for Children with Special Needs, we would have space and equipments to offer this services to people who suffered an accident or an injure, pregnant women, elderly people, etc.

2. Restaurant and bar: The so called Exhibition Centre would basically be an open area for bar and restaurant with a stage for shows

3. Conference/workshops: Together with the Arts School, with halls with capacity for different number of attendants, the Exhibition Centre will allow such happening in the Bilinyo Cultural Centre

4. Food preservation processing: The cottage factory at Toloro will offer such services

The facilities described above and the new services that will be delivered in the near future will help generating an income that would help meet the economical needs of the Langeti Integrated Initiative.

 We always aimed at this and, recently, a new window opened in this regard, thanks to the initial contact done by IsraAid. This international cooperation agency is already active in the three areas of the settlement, most specially in zone one, Iboa village. We are looking forward into signing an MoU with them to try to mobilise funds and start with the music programme, as long as it is of the interest of the communities and organised groups in Iboa area.

3. Challenges

About the running costs of Vura Music and Manuela Project, we have a very solid base and don’t believe we should have any challenges on securing the funds. Still, to be able of hosting adequately the Manuela Project activities, it is necessary the construction of new facilities. Funding for that purpose and for the construction of the Exhibition Centre has already been secured, yet extra funding for equipment and for the construction of the guest house has not yet been allocated. We are currently working on identifying new institutions, public or private, who could have children with special needs among their key targets. Apart from the information included above about Manuela Project, we would like to emphasize on the new prospects the construction of a new facility would give us:

• Increased capacity to welcome children with special needs of any kind

• Increased quality of the services offered

• Possibility of offering services to other members of the community, including victims of accidents, injuries, pregnant women, elderly, etc.

• New sources of income derived from the services offered to the community members other than the children with special needs

It is also very important to emphasize the fact that the running costs of the project are currently well covered, which means we are not looking for a sustained support that will allow our project to continue, but rather a one time support that will provide the bust we need.

About Ruddu Hwe, we have important future plans, including the construction of a cottage factory for processing fruits and vegetables, for which land has already been secured. In the future, we may try to look back to our current sources of funding and see whether the funds could be diverted to the running costs of Ruddu Hwe, but for the year 2023 we don’t have any certainty. Again, we need try and reach the institutions that are working on that field of agriculture and agroforestry, such as World Food Programme and FAO.

One of the biggest challenges we currently have is that we count on one single donor, from Spain, that is managing to collect resources form different contributors. Solidarios con Arua – Arua Elkartasuna is well experienced but very small organization with very little capacity to connect with different donors, thus we need to set the target of identifying other organizations, already established in Uganda, with even much more capacity than our current supporters. The positive aspect of our setting is that this donor has direct bonds with Uganda, well built for more than 30 years, and have no other intention than supporting the different projects we may bring to them. They know about every single step we do, particularly the whereabouts of the Executive Director. This means there has been no single expense that was not previously consulted and approved by them. They know deeply about our projects and we have the certainty of their support.