Today we visited the manufacturing facilities for the school uniforms included in the bedkit. The manufacturing takes place in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and employs mainly single mothers and student apprentices learning the trade. They have a high turnover rate as many of the women save their money, purchase their own sewing machines, and start their own businesses.
We also visited the homes of three former bedkit recipients. It was very emotional for us all.
We saw how very few possessions each recipient had and how their bedkits had weathered so well. One young teen boy told us how he had received his bedkit in 2007 and with an emotion-choked voiced claimed it "one of the highlights of his life."
Another recipient now lives with her grandmother and twenty-four other grandchildren as the parents have all died of AIDS. Another lives with her grandmother and struggles with being a parapalegic in Uganda society.
It was a day that made us all eager to get to the work of distributing the bedkits!
Debbie Will-Dryden
for SCAW Team Uganda 2010Post your comments here.
