Here’s our latest video update from one of our projects, Kitovu Mobile. Featuring Andy (our Community Partnership Manager) and Charles (Kitovu Mobile’s Director), they discuss how the support of the Uganda Marthon’s 2015 runners has helped the project, and how our 2016 runners can continue to make a lasting difference to the charity.
What is Kitovu Mobile?
Kitovu Mobile was founded in 1987 in response to the overwhelming impact of HIV/AIDS in the Masaka district. Originally, it solely aimed to care for people with HIV & AIDS, and conduct prevention education.
However it has now expanded its operations to not only care for the patients themselves, but whole communities affected by the disease. It seeks to empower the community through prevention, care and capacity building (using development to overcome obstacles that inhibit the community). This way, whole communities can learn to cope with HIV/AIDS and its impact.
The project currently cares for over 4,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, and trains 2,000 disadvantaged youths in modern, sustainable agricultural practice. This ensures through effective farming techniques, rural communities (who often suffer from HIV/AIDS) can support themselves with a reliable form of income.
How has the Uganda Marathon 2015 supported the Project?
A massive thank you to all our runners who ran the 2015 event and helped to support this project! With their fundraising, and then volunteer efforts (on ‘Make a Difference Day’), this has contributed to long-term, sustainable changes at Kitovu Molbile.
These include:
- Diary Cow Structure – a diary structure has been successfully built at the project’s demonstration farm, and now houses a cow and a calf. This helps the local community to hone their diary farming skills. Furthermore, when the calf has matured, it will be passed on to support another community, and repeat the process.
- Operational improvements – previously the project was incapable of recording and sorting the immense amount of data gathered from its operations, due to having an outdated system. Now, with our runner’s help, we’ve been able to supply ten computers to the project, helping them to have better record keeping, accountability and an improved capacity to fundraise.
How is the Uganda Marathon supporting the project in 2016?
The diary structure has proved such a success we want to continue building diary cow structures for the communities. Many farmers do not understand the full potential of Uganda’s land and live in poverty, when they could be receiving a sustainable level of income, through proper farming techniques. We want to change this, especially amongst the many rural communities who have been heavily impacted by HIV/AIDS.
The diary farm structure also kicked off the ‘pass a cow on’ initiative. This is where we donated a cow to the farm with the intension of the calf eventually being passed on to support another community (and so on).
Therefore we want to replicate this project across other communities and grow it across the Masaka region. Our 2016 runners’ fundraising will help fund a second diary cow structure and diary cow, and help Kitovu support even more communities afflicted by HIV/AIDS.
Additionally we are looking to fund a guest-house care centre, which will be a source of revenue for the project. The generated revenue will then be used to support cancer sufferers in Masaka, who often receive little support.
Through the help and support of the 2016 runners, we will be able to continue the great work started by our first group of international runners in 2015, and create a better standard of living in Masaka.
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