A group of 10 young people from different schools in the Eastern suburbs and Sydney are about to travel to Africa in September this year to experience life in Africa, meet the people, understand the challenges they face, and to make a contribution to their community.
With a planned visit to one community in Katebo, Uganda and the other near Thika, Kenya, the group are armed with the funds and the enthusiasm to help undertake a project chosen by the local community. In Kenya they will be visiting an orphanage, Familia Moja, which was co-founded by an inspiring young Melbourne man, Jess White. In the five years since its inception, Jess and Wambui, the Kenyan co-founder, have achieved a lot. There, we will be working at the orphanage as well as establishing a vegetable garden and building a chook pen. Check it out at www.familiamoja.org.
This will be the third group to visit Katebo in Uganda with the project co-ordinators and mentors, Julie Sale and Lisa Devine. At Katebo, they will be planting out coffee seedlings, another micro finance venture designed to help families in need, as well as helping to build fish drying racks or a pig pen. The last project is to construct chicken enclosures so that families affected by AIDS are able to sustain themselves into the future.
Through this work the students will be working along side the people, and in so doing learn more about their different cultures, gain insights into their lives and they into ours and break down barriers which sometimes exist between different cultures. Listen back to two of the students being interviewed by PBS’ Stani Goma on Flight 1067 to Africa!
