Meet a fundraiser # 3.....

For all of you who say you can't find the time to fundraise you should check this guy out...he managed to raise a whopping load of cash and he was extremely busy being born at the time!

This is Max and he qualifies as Soft Power's youngest ever fundraiser!

Unbelievably, he did a 12km sponsored run....!

I kid ye.

Serious-leee...

Max's mom and dad, Jon and Meg, kindly asked for donations towards the Education Centre as presents when Max was born...and the cash keeps rolling in!

We would love for Max (one day) to come and visit the Centre that he helped to create and to see the difference that he made so we are going to put his money towards landscaping the site. When he visits in the future there will be well-established trees and plants that are only there because of him!

Thank you Max, Meg and Jon!

"What's happening now?", we hear you cry....


Well...this is how the centre is looking at the moment - this photo was taken last week, on May 19th 2006. If you take a quick look back to the beginning of this blog you'll see a big difference in the state of the building!

Since Feburary we have completed the walls, layed a concrete slab at the top of the tower, the roof has been put on, the guttering has been attached and is working, the whole of the inside of one building has been plastered, the position of the electrics has been decided upon and the wires fitted, plastering has begun on the outside, window frames have been made and fitted to every single window, slabs and brick towers have been built to hold the water catchment tanks, the tanks themselves have been specially designed, made and delivered....erm, what else?! On June 19th we have the next influx from the 'Leeds University Soft Power supporters club' coming over to LIVE in the centre for 2 months and help us finish the building and landscape the whole site! We are itching for them to arrive - but not until we have laid the floor and fitted the door frames/doors (next week's job!). As you can see, there is so much that has happened already and yet so much that is going on at the moment...and that's just on site....

Off-site loads more work is happening to ensure that the Omugezi Cultural Centre (as the Centre will be called - Omugezi means Wisdom in the local language) will be a success from the word go. We are aiming to open in September so work has begun to make the grand unveiling of the building a bit of an event...Soft Power is holding a fund-raising 12-hour cycle marathon culminating in a full-moon party at the centre on September 23rd! There'll be a post about it soon on this blog if you want more information - or visit Soft Power's website for details of how you can join in or sponsor the event.

Also, there is a lot of planning going on to make sure we will be providing the best facilities, equipment and experiences to the most amount of people possible when we do open!

We are in the throes of fundraising for equipment to fill the computer room, science lab, theatre and library and also embarking on an ambitious fundraising quest to enable us to employ the 13 Ugandan members of staff we will need to run the Centre effectively. Our links with the primary schools, street children project and Soft Power Health are progressing as we design the services we will be offering to children and adults from the local and wider communities. Budgets are being drawn up, job descriptions written, funding bids being put together, solar power energy requirements being calculated, brows being wiped, sleepless nights being had, ulcers developing...but generally our plans for world domination are finally taking shape!

So...any and all help (both financial and practical) that you can offer would be gratefully received!

And now you can stop asking because THAT is what's happening now!

Now leave us alone, we are very busy!

Warned you....

A post about guttering.

Dave has tried to romanticise it by taking arty shot of it but let's face it, it's still guttering and I can't think of anything to say about it...except that we can now add our water catchment tanks which will at least make all this rain we're having more worthwhile.

Speaking of water catchment tanks...here's one of ours being modelled by Dave in the exact position it will sit when installed.

I don't know - plastering, guttering, water catchment...it's a wonder this blog hasn't won some kind of award.

Women's literacy group....

Last week we visited Masese, an area just on the outskirts of Jinja where the most desperately poor and/or displaced people live (those fleeing the war in the north of the country usually end up in Masese if they come to Jinja). It's a terrible place with awful sanitation and ramshackle housing with huge families living under tarpaulin or in badly built mud huts. People do not have any land to farm and cannot find work so they subsist on what little food they can get. Many of the children cannot afford to attend school and some end up living on the streets of Jinja trying to beg or steal to get enough food to feed themselves. We visited Masese with a representative from the Child Restoration Trust, they work trying to get street children back into school through counselling, support and education (we are hoping to do some more work with them in the future when the Education Centre opens).

All in all it was quite depressing to spend time in Masese - but then we visited a women's literacy group and we were blown away! This group meet twice a week under a tree and between 25 and 30 women regularly attend - this in itself was an inspirational thing to see, so many women of all ages desperate to learn despite their poverty and situation. Unfortunately they have no resources and were learning to read and write by scratching in the dirt with twigs....



Well, we thought, we can't have this...so we offered to make them some small slate blackboards.

I spent the next two days - with volunteers Michelle, Alison and Isaac - sawing, sanding and painting 36 small slate blackboards to be given to these women. We really wanted to show them that the inspirational effort and commitment they had shown in learning to read in order to improve their lives was an amazing thing and should be celebrated!

Check out the master carpenters at work...!

Yesterday we delivered these blackboards to the literacy group. They were pretty chuffed!

In total, apart from our time, the whole project cost around £15! So often we hear people say that they "can't afford to donate much" - this goes to show you don't have to be a millionaire to make a difference!

For more information about this project - and the work we plan to do with the Child Restoration Trust - please contact us.

Windows and walls.....

The windows in the theatre

Work is motoring along on site with all of our lovely wooden window frames now fitted. Look at them! Aren't they lovely?!


And not only that but there has been non-stop chiselling as the guys readied the walls for the electrician's handiwork before plastering one whole side of the centre - it is now finished and is looking superb!

Salim plasters the wall in the computer room - check out the smooth finish

Granted, this is perhaps not the most thrilling post we have ever put onto this blog and you may not exactly be overcome by the the progress....but Dave and I are wetting ourselves with excitement!

Log on again for more exhilarating updates and photos....

Next time...guttering!

It's not all work, work, work.....

We do spend a lot of time elbow-deep in paint, mud or cement but sometimes Soft Power people like to scrub themselves with a wire brush, get rid of all of that nasty red mud and put on their glad rags.



Here we all are celebrating Chris's (the John Travolta-like figure at the back of the photo) 35th birthday on the 'Hairy Lemon' island. As you can tell, the theme was 'posh' and we all rose to the challenge remarkably, especially Erin who donned a rather fetching gold lamee number which was the envy of all the girls. George, the absolute bounder at the bottom of the photo, didn't manage to snare himself a tasty filly all evening, despite stroking that rather lovely mustache continuously, the cad.

A fantastic evening was had by all so thanks to Rob and Erin at the Hairy Lemon and happy birthday Mr Travolta!