Reports on Aid Programmes - Spring 2008
Support for ongoing projects has continued unabated into 2008. To this we are delighted to report that we have been able to take on board three extra projects, further extending the influence that Trade Aid UK has been able to give to important relief programmes worldwide. Much of this has been enabled by the continued sale of Trade Aid UK Sugar through Tesco Stores and the sale of ethical travel insurance through its partner www.travelandinsure.com. The use of external aid agencies and charities has been instrumental in us being able to reach the remotest parts of the globe where often the needs are greatest.
Agricultural Project - Uganda
Links International approached us for assistance to purchase a plot of land adjacent to Kyamusi Secondary School in Uganda. The aim of this project is to provide a sizeable area of land which the school and its pupils can cultivate to supply their own fresh vegetables. Children growing up without a good source of vitamins and minerals found in natural foods often develop malnutrition related diseases, such as rickets and suffer from poor growth and development. So far the scheme has not only brought the long term prospect of a reliable and sustainable food source but it has also given employment to 19 people from the village.
Education Programme - India
Again, through Links International, an education programme is running in Chennai, India which we are now helping to support. The scheme involves the provision of a safe refuge for young girls who have been forced into prostitution at a very early age. By removing them from the streets and slums of Chennai, they are then given an education, and many go on with the skills required to forge a life out of poverty. This is one of the most rewarding projects with which we have been invited to be involved as the impact on these abused girls is truly life changing and rapid. To help fund the cost of saving a child from an environment of fear, mental and physical abuse and then give them a real future is a great reward for buying a Trade Aid UK bag of sugar.
Water Filtration Units - Uganda & India
We have increased our support for the ongoing rolling out of water filtration units into Uganda and now into the Indian sub continent. This is part of a larger charity led programme to extend the provision of these units into other countries in Africa and South America.
Just £30 buys a unit which will filter contaminated water into clean, germ free drinking water. In a 24 hour period, one unit can filter up to 60 litres which is more than enough water for an average family. One recent independent study of the ceramic filters in Zimbabwe and rural South Africa showed reduction in dysentery and diarrhoea of more than 80%, concluding that these filters are ‘an effective point-of-use intervention for reducing E-Coli and diarrhoea in African households.' Added to the tremendous health benefits that come from drinking clean water, the social benefits can also be profound, leading to children spending more time in school and adults spending more time at work. Absenteeism, due to sickness in the African school in which clean water kits were installed, immediately dropped from more than 45% to less than 5%.
Goats Husbandry Project - Kenya
We have recently made donations to buy some hi-bred goats for breeding in Kenya through the Pokot Rural Service Project, a small organisation administered here in the UK. The goats are bred by Farm Africa in their goat programme in Tanzania and then purchased by the Pokot Project. These goats are of a high genetic source which will increase the health and productivity of local stocks and provide the owners with a good form of revenue. The farmers undergo a training period and are carefully selected to receive these goats and then, as the breeding cycle begins, the farmer gives back to the aid programme a quota, thereby enabling the scheme to develop its own self sustainability. The plan is to continue training with members of women’s groups in the West Pokot community in North West Kenya. In general, these people have not suffered directly from the riots which occurred in neighbouring districts in 2007 but they will nevertheless be greatly affected by its knock-on effects, as so many already live close to the breadline. A second project is planned to start training another group in goat husbandry, thereby expanding the benefits of the Dairy Goat Improvement Programme. Not only does the scheme demonstrate the relevance and benefits of organic, rotational crop production but it also encourages small farmers away from the expensive, input-dependant monoculture of maize that prevails in the area. Within this agricultural community the next phase will be to introduce an element of improved poultry production for those people who have no land and are therefore unable to keep goats. A system will be introduced, whereby one improved cockerel is exchanged with 3 local birds on a self-funding basis. The cross of an improved cockerel on local hens increases egg production from approximately 30 to at least 70 eggs per hen per annum, as well as increasing the meat production.
Children's Refuge - Colombia
Trade Aid UK regularly donates funds to a small charity, IMC, working in Columbia. These funds help with the ongoing needs of street children, mainly in and around the capital, Bogotá. In particular, we support their feeding and education programme where otherwise these street children would be faced with the prospect of recycling rubbish from the local rubbish tips and where a drift into drug related crime is an all too common route into adulthood. One success story reported to us by IMC is of four brothers who have recently moved into an IMC run farm refuge. They had been living with their mother in a room in a bar in a very poor area of Bogotá, their father had abandoned them some while ago and they had no chance of going to school. They were suffering from malnutrition and were being left alone all day as their mother went out to work recycling rubbish. After a period of rehabilitation, the boys have settled in. Malnutrition is a thing of the past and they have begun to receive an education which will enable them to find a way out of the poverty trap. Part of IMC's mandate is to train and care for these local children by giving them vocational training in a work skill to suit the ability of each child. The small farm is a great help in the successful training of the children to gain good life habits and work skills for their future and escape from a destiny of poverty.
Education Programme – Peru
We have continued to support the work of Project Peru with their refuge in Lima and, like that of Colombia, the issues encountered here reflect the same levels social deprivation, with the consequent need for education to provide a hope for the future. The children are not specifically "street children" in the current popular understanding of the phrase, though some may be, and some might be if Project Peru did not help. Many do have relatives who, for different reasons, cannot care for them. Some unaccompanied children come for short periods until they can be accepted into other neighbouring refuges or until they can be reunited with family members to try to rebuild their normal family lives.
Sponsored Cycle Rides
Our aid work is not only sourced from our commercial activities, but we do, as time permits, like to get involved with sponsored events, as we did in 2007 joining the annual cycle ride from Guildford, where the Charity is based, to Paris to support the charity Project Peru. As we go to print, plans are well advanced to support the Pokot Goat Project with a sponsored Lands End to John O’Groats Cycle Ride in July 2008. These activities compliment our ongoing commitment to all the projects within the report and new programmes in the future.