On the initiative of the Labora youth workshop in Hildesheim, we helped to put together tools and small machines for the “Children Raising Voices” project in Kampala, Uganda. Katja Rohde from Hildesheim is a co-founder of this project and presented it during the “One World Week” in Hildesheim in 2009. Together with HeJo Theisgen from Labora, we put together the contents of a wooden crate, which was transported by air freight to Kampala in March of this year.
Kinder Raising Voices describes its work as follows: “Many people in Uganda have to live far below the subsistence level. Due to the high birth rate and low life expectancy, children in Uganda are usually left to fend for themselves from a young age.
The street children’s project “Kinder Raising Voices” (KRV) was founded by Katja Rohde, a qualified social pedagogue, Nathan Lule, Isaac Lule and Silver Bisaso and arose from the idea of offering socially disadvantaged homeless children, such as AIDS orphans in Uganda, a better future through education. A crucial point for the foundation of this project was the corruption that prevails in other social projects. It is important to us that the donations are used effectively for the project.
The idea of setting up our own project for disadvantaged children first came up in 2006. In January 2009, the idea was put into practice and KRV became increasingly involved with the issue of “life on the street”. We went to the slums, saw how the children live, made contact with them and were able to get an idea of their living situation.
When we were given facilities in Kawempe, a suburb of the capital Kampala, we initially started the project with five children who were able to attend school thanks to our support. We started with various smaller projects, such as vegetable growing, chicken farming, handicrafts and artistic drawing.
We then used the experience we gained to incorporate our ideas for implementing and designing the KRV project as realistically as possible.
Our aim is to offer the children in the project a perspective, to give them a home and to provide them with access to education.
Our objective is for the children to develop into competent individuals who are able to master the tasks and challenges of their lives themselves.
