Friday, July 27, 2007

Volunteer Meet-Up: Kampala II

A number of cafes and restaurants around the city center played host to numerous long conversations between four SDV volunteers this week - Charles, Oliver, Emmanuel and Sri.

All four have background in IT and between them have industry experience in Uganda, England and the US and volunteer experience in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and of course, Uganda.

The sodas, coffees and hot-chocolates fuelled many hours of intense discussions on mainly the future of SDV.

We all like the fact that SDV is providing free access and training to the community and want to continue doing that, even beyond the promised six months.

But, we don't want to rely on funding.

The S word was mentioned rather often - how to become sustainable when there is virtually no possibility of generating cash flow in the villages, and while not tying ourselves to funding?

If this seemed like a conundrum at first, by the end of the week, we have come up with a number of exciting ideas.

Over the next month we will continue the discussions off-line (Sri is returning to Sironko, Charles, though based in Kampala will be making regular visits, and Oliver and Emmanuel, based in Bushenyi and Kampala respectively will use the air-waves and travel to Sironko on occassion).

And while the discussions continue, we are already taking the first cautious steps in implementing some of the ideas.

We look forward to sharing more details as we make progress.

In the meantime, thank you to the gang at SDV, Aloysius, Rogers and Sam for holding down the fort during the week!

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