Based on needs assessment (1/4-16/12) at Bunabumali this is 2012 plan of action:
- One new 3 room classroom building size 72 X 22
- One new 2 room health center size 22 X 14
- One new quantity foods kitchen size 15 X 8
- Two new 10,000 liter water tanks…water pre-treated
- Two new 1,000 liter drinking water only tanks…fully treated
- One new 10,000 rain water collection tank..not for drinking
- Six new latrines..5 year expected life…total footprint 8 X 12
- Four new all cement shower stalls…total footprint 8 X 12
- Complete renovation existing library building to include all new furniture.
- Comprehensive solar power installation to provide power to all 9 above Total project budget = $30,000
Project work began during Rick Gormlys visit on both water system and library renovation
Bunabumali the movie
We have had it with the shakey youtube stills. The Bunabumali experience will travel the world and to accompany the book or vice versa. We will shoot a documentary about change in rural Uganda and show the world not all is doom and gloom.
The goal…
- Buna is a showcase and pilot project to be copied countrywide.
- There are plenty of motivated “Norman’s” lacking the resources we have managed to acquire.
- The Buna trailer will motivate folks to wake up and move forward!
- We’ll be building a startup movie studio at the same time.
Jeff Will
Breaking the negative spiral
BUDUDA, Uganda (Xinhua) Uganda’s rapid population growth threatens to wipe out forests. The commemorations were held at Bulucheke Sub County in the eastern Ugandan district of Bududa under the theme “Plant a tree, save a life.”
- Bunabumali’s bottlehouse received the sustanaible building thophy.
Facts…
- With 7.1 births per woman, the country has the second highest fertility rates in the world, ranking behind Niger which has 7.9 births per woman.
- United Nations statistics show that by 2050, the Uganda’s population will have soared to 130 million people, almost five times the current population.
This means feeding, housing, creating employment and income for so many people will eat into the forests.
high population is due to ignorance about family planning methods such as use of contraceptives. According to Isiah Mbuga, the national program officer at the country’s Population Secretariat, 750,000 children out of the 1, 200,000 children produced annually arise out of unplanned pregnancies.
Bunabumali is addressing these issues by opening the FIRMC medical center
High school dropout rate, Mbuga said those who fail to stay at school return home to destroy forests and the natural environment. ”As such, it’s these children arising out of these unplanned pregnancies that tend to exert pressure on the natural resources such as forests and wetlands. ”Most of them encroach on the wetlands to makes burnt bricks and mine sand,” he said. ”These activities are detrimental to the environment.
“The worst part is that 53 percent of the girls in Uganda produce before reaching 20 years.
Deforestation in Uganda is mainly attributed to the high population growth and poverty.
National Forestry Authority (NFA), the country’s forestry regulatory body statistics show that since 1990, the forest cover in Uganda has dropped from 24 percent to 17 percent. NFA statistics also show that the country has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in Eastern Africa, losing over 80, 000 hectares of forest cover every year.
Some 30 percent of Uganda’s forests are protected while the 70 percent are not because they are on private land. The 70 percent are at the mercy of private land owners who contemplate between saving them or going for lucrative logging and opening up the land for farming. Illegal timber logging and trade continues despite stringent regulatory measures. Encroacher’s fiercely resist any attempts by NFA to evict them. They either call on politicians to come to their rescue or beat up the forest rangers.
“Our biggest challenge to forest conservation is the high population growth rate. About 98 percent of Ugandans depend on wood for fuel and timber.
“That has translated in to the massive cutting of trees across the country for firewood and charcoal,” Gershom Onyango, the Director NFA told hundreds of people who had turned up at Bulucheke Sub County to commemorate WED. Uganda has started paying for the massive deforestation.
According to Onyango, the government has secured 10 million U.S. dollars from the European Union to steer the national campaign on tree planting that runs until 2013.
“Much as we have the issue of population growth at hand, communities need to be educated on the relevance of planting trees, ” Onyango said. National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), the country’s environmental watchdog has also embarked on a program of encouraging communities especially in mountainous areas and semi arid areas in the country to practice better farming methods.
Most landslides in the mountainous areas in the country have been blamed on deforestation.
The government is also in the process of setting up an Environmental Police Force that will ensure compliance with environmental and other conservation laws. The force will be dedicated to forestry management, while the rest will manage wetlands.
Keywords
Yes you are right, I should get myself into a fitrness studio ;-)
When you buy this book…
You provide 1 month’s internet access to the village of your choice featured in the book and make it possible for them to build their own future. TimeDesk Africa will double your investment and turn this into a bottleneck fund providing much needed financial stability to the community.
- Download
- Buy on-line
- Resell
- Promote
Multi media
The blog pages form the dynamic part where readers can add comments and get involved, suggest solutions and participate in the corwdsourcing activities.
Photo screening.
We have an image database spread over facebook and Picasaweb. From this we need to extract the best pictures and turn them into one presentation. What’s the best and fastest way to achieve this?
- The quality differs per owner. Since 2004 over 35 foreigners have visited Bunabumali. Norman provides professional pictures and videos with the Canon EOS 5 camera donated by Christopher
- Photo journalist Siena Antsis also may have an archive or unpublished professional pictures.
- There’s also a few historic you tube video’s but we really need an updated video report as soon as possible.
Note Ben, it’s lonely at the bottom!
From Bunabumali Best Pictures
“It’s lonely at the top, a quote often used by Captains of Industry. From our experience I can tell to people like Norman being lonely is the least of their worries.
Their challenge is 50 times tougher since, without an income, they they have to fight off and make sense of despair, fear, hunger, sickness, extreme poverty disappointment, anger, false promises, dishonesty”, bureaucracy, Northern ignorance and many other facts of life before they can even think about a fraction of the first taste of success. And than still keep up the spirit and remain convinced they will achieve their goal!. Most CEOS of multinationals would not survive this challenge!
The book doubles as a development manual. This way the discussion is turned into a lesson for all who face a similar challenge.
Norman’s pride, ambition and determination identifies 80 % the problems people like him face when they take to the road of improving local conditions and move their village into the 21st century.
Personal ambition … the driving force behind success or failure.
Personal ambition alone is not enough. It’s lonely at the top, is a quote many captains of industry use in their memories. It’s lonely at the start of the voyage people like Norman embark upon even more.
Community support…
Without support from the local community the loneranger will have a difficult time. At the same time it’s a catch 22 because if the loneranger can’t show success, even at basic level, the community will never believe the efforts will pay of.
Attention, confidence and trust…
Norman’s adventure can to some extend be compared with the Voyage of the Enterprize SIFI movie, to boldly go where none went before… The Internet!
His success is based on free Internet access via Makarere University, as this helped him to remain in contact almost 24/7 and experiment with the ideas I shared with him. Many of his friends, with similar ambitions failed to benefit like him untill now simply they couldn’t afford Internet access!.
In a way he was lucky to meet me and although he introduced me to some of his friends as was unable to give them the same level of attention.
