A clone of this projector has just started its journey to Sironko from New York City.
The story starts with a friend suggesting that a projector would be a good addition to the center as it would help provide a collective experience (in contrast to the single person experience that a computer offers) and thus possibly bringing people closer.
We thought it was a "beautiful" idea, to quote one of our initial responses. (We liked it especially since very few households have a television set in Budadiri - our base in Sironko district.)
So, our friend sent an email to his friends at the university sharing this idea. They responded, rather generously, and within weeks we had a few hundred dollars. We must admit that we were quite pleasantly surprised by all of this.
Now, we had to get creative to find a way to send the projector to Uganda. We got lucky and received an enthusiastic response from an Airline Ambassadors volunteer, Patriece, willing to take it with her on an upcoming trip to Uganda. The catch - we had just one day, today, to purchase and deliver the projector to her in New York City.
Hoping against hope, we called a friend in NYC and she totally amazed us with her willingness to put in the time and effort to find the model we wanted and to hand deliver it to Patriece, all on last minute's notice.
So, after many phone calls, IMs and emails between four people in three different states, not to mention negotiating with the salesperson to get the same great deal we saw at an online store, the projector is now on its way across the Atlantic.
It all happened so quickly that we still can't quite believe it. A very big thank you to everyone who lent a helping hand!
1 comment:
As an aside to the story, we did considere getting a projector second hand. However, given that the bulb is the most expensive piece of the projector and a second hand bulb would just about be spent (bulbs have a fixed lifetime) we made the call to buy a new one.
Post a Comment