Project Uganda

lørdag 27. september 2014

Re-use waste materials part 2: reuse glassbottles

As described in earlier post (Link: Re-use Waste materials part 1) the potenital of re-using waste materials is only limited by your own creativity! For the New Miles2Smiles center, we looked into the possibility of using glassbottles as wall-infills, as heat-collectors and as window elements. We found for example that glassbottles give a fantastic light effect when molded into an earth-wall directly exposed to sunlight! The children of the Miles2Smiles are gonna love this feature! And it is so beautiful and simple!

Photocredits: www.paulglover.org, www.adn.com

fredag 26. september 2014

Presentation of the Miles2Smiles organization and The Strømme Foundation

As I realized, we haven't yet given a real presentation of the Miles2Smiles, which is the end-user for this project and has been an important influence and inspiration all the way. So here comes a short presentation of Miles2Smiles:

(photo credit: Ester Halto)

Miles2Smiles is a day-care and welfare center which aims to help families living in the slum of Kampala with day-care for the children and education in financial management and microfinance for the women.

When the local authorities passed a law forbidding the mothers to bring their children to the market with them, as it was thought of as unsafe for the children, many of these women only had the option to leave their children at home all day, locked up and alone. The center was therefore founded in 2006 close to the local market where the mothers work to earn their only income, as a day-care center where the women could leave their children safely during the day.

The center is run as daycare and nursery school, where they help children as young as 2-3 years old to learn the alphabet and the numbers, so that when they "graduate" at the age of six, they have a solid foundation for starting school and getting an education. The New Miles2Smiles center will in addition provide education for women outside the day-care’s opening hours.

The Strømme foundation in Norway supports Miles2Smiles to help offer good day-care facilities at very low cost, and in addition offer microfinance education for the mothers to help them out of poverty. Strømme is a non-governmental organization that focuses on the principle of "help to self-help" through the means of education and microfinance in the fight against poverty worldwide.

For more information about Miles2Smiles, check out (and like) their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Miles2smiles

For more information about The Strømme Foundation, check out (and like) their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Strommefoundation and their webpage: http://strommestiftelsen.no/

Also, check out earlier posts and read the sad but warming story behind the Miles2Smiles, as told by the founder Catherine Kitongo

The little angel in the market; - The story behind Miles2SMiles

The story behind the Miles2Smiles Foundation, as told by the founder Catherine Kitongo:

One day I went to get my hair braided by a woman in the market of Kampala. My eyes rested upon this other woman, selling food while caring for her little baby. The litte baby looked so small and frail, and I would have guessed it to be no more than 3 months old. When I later asked about the child’s age I learned that it was 11 months old, and I remember my heart sank.

This was the brutality, - I realized, - for many struggling mothers working long hours in the local market with minimal income. They could not afford to leave the child in a day care center, and they could not afford to stay home, taking care of the child. As bringing their child to the market would lower their chances of making money, their only solution was to leave their children at home during the day, often locked up in small, dark spaces. This was done by loving mothers with the purpose of protecting their children, but with woeful result of the child being undernourished and under-developed, and often seriously or even fatally ill.

A great desire to help encouraged me to create an organization to help found a day care center for the children of mothers working at the market. I founded an organization, found a place with an affordable rent close to the market and engaged people who were willing to help me run the day care. I was now eager to finally welcome my first child, who I wanted to be that little baby I had seen on the market that day.

When I returned to the market, excited to give the mother the uplifting news and a promise of a better future for this child, I learned that the baby had died few days ago.

It was too late for this child, but there were many children still to be saved.

Seeing this little baby with its mother on the market that day was the inspiration that initiated the Miles2Smiles wellfare center. This little angel in the market of Kampala set out the course for many, many children to come.

- story told by the founder of Miles2Smiles, Catherine Kitongo, re-told by project1uganda.blogspot.no

fredag 19. september 2014

Why Uganda?

Why Uganda?
We´ll let the numbers speak for themselves:

From: http://uncuganda.blogspot.no

mandag 8. september 2014

Re-use of waste materials: part 1 /Potensialet i søppel: del 1

Bæredyktighet er en svært viktig faktor i dette prosjektet, både sosialt og miljømessig. De langsiktige mulighetene som ligger i å bevisstgjøre lokalbefolkningen i måter å behandle og gjenbruke ting som vanligvis blir sett på som søppel er undervurdert, og var viktig å fokusere spesielt på. En heldig tilfeldighet er at disse materialene ofte er i overflod, gratis og enkle å få tak i i slumområdene som Kalerwe i Kampala. Under oppholde vårt i Kampala passerte vi mange "skrotplasser" på vei til Miles2Smiles senteret hver dag, og vi begynte å tenke på potensialet i å gjenbruke "søppel" til forskjellige elementer i det nye senteret.

Dette kicket i gang en grundig research-prosess på ulike måter å gjenbruke søppel på. Vi fokuserte på materialer vi hadde observert i nærområdet, som gamle bildekk og glassflasker. Gamle bildekk, for eksempel, viste seg å ha utallige bruksområder etter å ha gjort sin nytte som nettopp bildekk.

Vi samlet all inspirasjon og jobbet oss ned til et collage som representerte alle mulige bruksområder vi ville bruke i vårt prosjekt, - og ideer som også kunne tas i bruk av lokalbefolkningen. Collaget under viser alle bruksområder for bildekk som allerede er implementert i designet vårt for det nye Miles2Smiles senteret!