The trainees, 14 in total, were a promising bunch of 11 men and 3 women from various backgrounds from working in community development to having their own businesses. They all converged on Kampala for a continuation of their training last week. This is where things started happening like I had expected them to before. I ended up being short-staffed and had to call in some favors from friends (who I am extremely grateful to), then the night before the training was to start – before we had printed most of the handouts and materials necessary for the training, the printer, that has actually been giving us problems since its purchase, stopped functioning again.

Pretty much ever since I got to Uganda about 2.5 months ago to work for Barefoot Power, I have been working on a training to teach people business skills they’ll need to start a micro-franchise selling the solar lamps we’re here to distribute. Well, we’re finally about to start training our first batch of entrepreneurs! [...]

A couple weeks back I got to go with some local NGO workers to Masaka, a town South-West of Kampala (the capital of Uganda and my new home).
My mission was to meet with some community-based organizations (CBOs), present the Firefly lamp and panel to them and see if I could identify a couple people who [...]

(Originally posted July 9th, 2008)
The other day Harry and I went to the monthly meeting of the directors of many different NGOs with offices in Kampala. We had been invited to the meeting by the director of Care Uganda and at the meeting there were representatives of about 15 other NGOs including Oxfam, Christian Children’s [...]

(Originally posted June 25th, 2008)
It’s been about a month since I arrived in Uganda and I’ve gotten started at work, moved into an apartment and I’m really settling into life in Kampala. Work is coming along well, I’m much more familiar with the project and my role here now which is officially called “Recruitment and [...]