In July 2019, eleven young people and two teachers from Darwen Aldridge Community Academy will be travelling to Kampala, Uganda, to work with the young children of the Acholi community. The Acholi people were forced to flee their homeland in the north of Uganda during the Ugandan Civil War and settled in the city of Kampala, living in slum conditions with very few civil and legal rights. Many of the children have no access to formal education and it is these children that our team support through the continually evolving AfriDACA project.
This will be the fourth time that an AfriDACA team has worked with the Acholi people. In July 2013 they spent one day with the tribe and identified the severe needs and requirements of a community forgotten by its own nation. Visits in 2015 and 2017 saw teams working tirelessly for the week providing catch up education sessions to young people who had a thirst for learning, despite their challenging circumstances.
The programme for this year not only aims to educate the young people during the time we are there but provide the adults with the resources and expertise to carry on our work beyond our departure. Our students are currently actively preparing lessons which will be delivered to young people who have limited access to education through a charity and to children for whom education is out of reach and cannot access the massively oversubscribed charitable input.
To make the venture possible, the team need to fundraise for this project.