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AcTa Africans CAN transform Africa

Empower Africans to End the Cycle of War & Poverty in Africa

Positions:

1. We believe in the capacity of Africas to creatively and successfully forge their own futures.
2. We believe in the sanctity of dignity, opportunity, and human rights.
3. We believe that human beings have a right to live in a world free of war, persecution, and fear.

Description:

* AcTa project believes in the power of Africans to transform their own lives and the lives of those around them.

* There are 922,011,000 million Africans in Africa and out of these, 9.1 million refugees living in protracted refugee situations.

* For these Africans and refugees, jobs are scarce, health care is unreliable, education severely limited, and food and water are strictly rationed.

* AcTa project creates opportunities for African communities and those affected by war to:
- seek education
- gain economic self-sufficiency
- find solutions to community problems

For more information about our results, go to www.thenile.btik.com

AcTa project provides Africans and refugees with health-based, educational, financial and vocational resources to improve their standard of living. In the long term Africans and refugees develop leadership, education, and vocational skills that will aid their home countries when they eventually repatriate. In this way, AcTa project tackles the root causes of protracted conflicts by helping communities emerge from poverty, fostering peace, and developing future leaders.

Mission:

AcTa project aims to educate, empower, and enrich the lives of Africans and communities living in slums by partnering westerners with Africans in the Diaspora to implement community development projects such as libraries, computer centres, micro-finance & micro-lending, entrepreneurship, HIV/AIDS education, women's empowerment initiatives, and more. AcTa project also advocates for solutions to problems facing Africans and refugees worldwide.  

Description:

AcTa Community Solutions - AcTa Community Solutions (ACS) facilitates community development by allowing solutions to arise from within a community. By putting project development responsibilities in the hands of Africans and refugees, ACS builds local leadership capacity and allows communities to pursue their own visions for the future.

AcTa Education Fund - The AcTa Education Fund (AEF) provides educational sponsorship to Africans and refugee youth and young adults who are otherwise unable to afford schooling. Believing strongly in the power of educated individuals to advance their communities, AcTa project provides scholarships to promising individuals to attend secondary and vocational school.

AcTa Microfinance Institute - The AcTa Microfinance Institute (AMI) provides small business loans to individuals who wish to create economic change through self-reliance and self-employment. Individually tailoring loans to the needs of each borrower, AMI serves those who could not otherwise establish credit. Loan by loan, AMI steadily reduces poverty, increases food security, alleviates dependence on international aid, and allows individuals affected by war to regain control over their lives.

Collaborative Approach

The NILE's Collaborative Project Planning Process is based on the belief that the most effective, relevant, and sustainable development projects come from the African and refugee community itself. Africans and refugees’ insights into the social, physical and political settings in which they live are a necessary tool for understanding community needs and envisioning inventive solutions to local problems. Through partnership with African community leaders and refugees, The NILE provides an innovative framework to carefully and systematically transform these insights into action. The NILE’s approach offers African Community leaders and refugee leaders the opportunity to shape the future of their communities as they develop skills that will empower them to grow as individuals and leaders.

The NILE begins the Collaborative Project Planning Process by identifying leaders in the communities and refugee community who are especially capable of spearheading development initiatives. Once chosen, these leaders conduct extensive research through various participatory methods to determine specific community needs. The African community leaders, refugee leaders and The NILE staff work to develop a deep understanding of these needs and to suggest and analyze possible solutions. This process culminates in the completion of an official project proposal, drafted by the community leaders and refugee leaders, that is submitted for funding by The NILE donors. Once funded, the project is implemented and monitored by a 'Project Facilitator' chosen from and by the group of African community leaders and refugee leaders.

Ultimately, the CPPP results not only in the creation of an innovative project to benefit the African community and the refugee community but also in the development of African leaders and refugee leaders with the confidence and capacity to carry out similar problem solving initiatives of their own. Many of the people The NILE works with face the opportunity to make a difference in their communities, making The NILE's emphasis on community development through African community leadership and refugee leadership all the more urgent.  

Current Projects

Education

Community Enrichment

Economic Development

Health Education

Women’s Empowerment

Results we hope to achieve

LIBRARIES

COMPUTER TRAINING CENTRES

HEALTH EDUCATION & ACCESS SERVICES

PRESCHOOL FACILITIES

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT & SAFETY

REPATRIATION CENTERS

REFUGEE RIGHTS

ADULT EDUCATION

ARTS & MUSIC PROGRAMS

MICROFINANCE

EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY

Our Work

For the 922,011,000 million Africans and 9.1 million people displaced by war in Africa, The NILE provides the opportunity to work toward a better future. Rather than viewing Africans and refugees as a humanitarian problem, The NILE and partners believes that individuals affected by war, famine, poverty are a key factor to breaking the cycle of war and poverty in Africa. Unlike UN agencies, host country governments, or traditional NGOs which focus on providing basic protection and humanitarian relief, The NILE's projects build upon the natural capacity of refugees to improve their own futures. In this way, The NILE builds economic and leadership capacity in African communities affected by war and lays the foundation for peace, stability, and prosperity. As opposed to the traditional approach, The NILE allows solutions to arise from within communities rather than imposing solutions upon communities.

Mission:

AcTa project builds upon the capacity of Africans in Diaspora to cultivate empowered communities and to create the conditions for peace and prosperity in their countries.

Strategy:

The NILE's strategy centres around the idea that African communities and refugees are a particularly powerful target population in the pursuit of peace and security in war-torn regions. In Africa, where conflicts tend to be long and drawn out, African and refugee populations are not only highly accessible, but also highly motivated – open to new ideas and committed to building better futures for themselves and their families. Most importantly, people displaced by war will eventually return to their home countries and communities and bring with them the new knowledge and skills that they gained while in refuge. Thus, building capacity in individuals who have been forced to flee from war allows for the process of peace-building and social stabilization to begin before the war even ends.

Other Ways to Help

More than anything, The NILE needs your donations to continue its work. If you want to help in other ways, we encourage you to consider the options below.

• The NILE Giving Group
• Wish List
• Run a Book Drive

Wish List

While The NILE is most in need of funding for its projects, there may be other ways you can help us in the pursuit of our mission of investing in individuals.

Due to the high costs of shipping overseas, The NILE generally prefers to receive cash donations rather than in-kind (material) donations because cash donations allow us to save money on shipping and purchase locally-produced materials at a cheaper price. Still, there are several items and partnerships that we are currently looking to acquire in the United Kingdom. If you are able to help fulfil any of the following needs, please email us and The NILE staff member will get in touch with you for coordination. Like cash or in-kind donations.

In-Kind Goods

• Laptop computers/Desktop computers
  • Computer skills are highly sought-after in project centres and camps, as they offer African communities and refugees higher marketability when the time comes to secure employment or open a business.
  • In order to train African communities and refugees in computer skills, The NILE and partners needs durable, functional laptop or desktop computers.
  • Second hand laptops or desktop computers are welcome if they are in working condition.
• Computer software
  • To increase the capacity of our computer training centres and to offer educational resources to the African and refugee populations we serve, The NILE and partners uses its computer centres as information resource access points where communities and refugees can go for information.
  • We currently need reference software, educational games, and similar computer software that can be used to learn about any variety of subjects.

Sponsors

• Shipping Sponsor – Because The NILE is so geographically diverse, we often rely on shipping to transport materials. This expense cuts into funds that, if sponsored, would go directly toward The NILE’s mission and operations. We’re currently aiming to secure shipping sponsors for both domestic and international shipping.
• Air Travel Sponsor – On average, The NILE and partners would fly 17 round trip flights from the UK to Africa each year. These expenses, while necessary to our work, would directly support our work if they were sponsored.
• Vehicle Sponsor - The NILE and partners relies heavily on its vehicles. We use bicycles to get around, but our vehicles are instrumental in the transport of supplies and materials to remote locations in each community or camp. We’re currently looking for a vehicle sponsor to purchase the requisite vehicles for The NILE and partners.
• Solar Power Sponsor – Because the centres and camps that The NILE and partners works in don’t offer electricity, we use solar power to run our computer centres, libraries, health centres, and all of our other projects. With amazing advancements being made in solar energy research, we’re looking for a solar power sponsor to support The NILE’s partner existing facilities as well as construction of new ones as our projects expand.

Run a Book Drive

One of the ways that The NILE and partners receives funding is through the hard work of college students across the country who run book drives. The students who run the drives find success when they start early in the semester and recruit a dependable group of friends to help support the drive. The number of people you’ll need on your team depends on the size of your campus.

After marketing the drive with materials provided by The NILE, book collection begins when students begin selling books during finals. You’ll set up collection boxes across the campus and direct fellow students to support your drive by giving their unwanted books. At the end of the quarter/semester, your team will package the books into boxes provided by The NILE and they will be picked up and brought to The NILE offices in preparation for shipping to Africa. The NILE receives funds for each qualifying book.

Running a book drive is a great way to learn about grassroots fundraising for non-profit organisation and provides experience in leading and managing a team in pursuit of a goal.

Interested in running a book drive to benefit The NILE? Contact us, and remember – the earlier you start, the better off your drive will be.

Start a Giving Group

The NILE wants to work with committed, self-motivated students and community members to pursue our goal of helping to end the cycle of war and poverty in Africa. Your school, college, or community group can help us do this by signing up to lead The NILE Giving Group. The NILE Giving Groups have two objectives: to support and to provide education. By choosing to support one of The NILE's ongoing community development projects, your Giving Group sustains the work of many African communities and refugees who are affecting social change in their communities by running libraries, computer technology centres, preschools, health education programs, and refugee rights advocacy projects. Working with The NILE in this capacity also provides the unique opportunity to communicate directly with the African community and refugee staff running the project that you are supporting through letter writing and email.

When students and community members become interested in participating, The NILE provides a Giving Group resource kit. The kit provides complete guidelines and suggestions for educating your local community about the African community and international refugee crisis, as well as tips and ideas for hosting fund-raising events to harness support. If you are interested in starting a group, please contact us.

UGANDA SCHOOLS COMPUTER SKILLS TRANSFER INITIATIVE

Introduction

This is a proposal whose major objective is to assist schools (both primary and secondary) in Uganda acquire used computers to enable pupils and students acquire computer skills. Ultimately, the project seeks to bridge the digital divide between the north and south, create wealth opportunities and reverse illegal migration trends to Western Europe. This will be done by acquiring used computers from Britain which are still in a good condition and distribute them to selected schools to establish computer laboratories where pupils and students can be taught computer skills.

In 1997, Government of Uganda introduced the Universal Primary Education (UPE) to enable majority of children who were locked out of school to attain at least primary education. The impact of UPE was tremendous. The primary school enrolment shot up from 2.5 million children to 7 million. The UPE has since 2005 been supplemented by the Universal Primary Education (UPE) to enable UPE children complete secondary education.

Both UPE and USE if well implemented may ultimately contribute to poverty eradication, create job opportunities and reduce the rapid population growth which currently stands at 3.6 one of the highest in the world. The proposed initiative seeks to compliment the government efforts at providing education facilities to many Ugandan children. Most importantly, it is envisaged that computer labs that will be set up by benefiting schools will be able to also install email and Internet connectivity which will avail students a lot of information resources needed for their education careers.

Statement of the Problem

While UPE and USE have opened opportunities to majority children from poor families to acquire education, both programmes face serious challenges. First, current research findings show that most of UPE graduates cannot read and write. In other words, UPE products are very poor. Second, almost 70% pupils who enrol for primary one never complete primary seven. Third, Universal Secondary Education was introduced without proper planning leading to many children fail to get absorbed into secondary schools. Most critically, the UPE philosophy of not allowing any child to repeat means that even failed pupils have to enrol into secondary schools. This has been seen as a threat to the quality of education in Uganda.

In spite, of the imperfections, UPE in Uganda has become a model for regional countries to copy and replicate. What needs to be done is to improve the quality of UPE and USE rather than shoot it down. In situations where children started studying under trees, government has put up some structures and as such children no longer have to go home whenever, it is going to rain.

Consequently, this proposal aims at building capacity of UPE and USE especially in schools in Northern Uganda where because of the rebellion of the Lords Resistance Army, the education sector collapsed with most schools closing down and people going to internally displaced persons camps (IDPs).  

Objectives

a)     To compliment Government efforts in the implementation of UPE and USE in Uganda programmes by imparting additional computer skills;

b)     To bridge the north-south digital divide by transferring and imparting information technology to young people in the Uganda who will be able to utilize the technology to create wealth;

c)     To increase the competitiveness of Uganda educated persons on the global market;

d)    To contribute to post-conflict recovery and regeneration of war torn Northern Uganda by specifically supporting the education sector in the north;

Expected Impacts

§        Once implemented, the project is expected to transfer computer skills to the rural and marginalized students in Uganda which are necessary for future success;

§        The project also is expected to bridge the information technology digital divide between rural and urban Ugandan students at the same time between the students in Western Europe and North America and Africa;

§        It is also hoped that the computer skills transferred to students will improve their learning and contribute to their competitiveness in their pursuit for the education careers.

Implementation of the Project

The project will be implemented in partnership between the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) a Non-Governmental Organization based in Kampala and The NILE African Development Organisation (NADO) based in United Kingdom. It would entail NADO soliciting and dispatching used computers to Uganda while ACODE identifies and hands over the computers to selected districts.

Supporting Schools in Africa

Africa is one of the least developed continents in the world. People in that continent  face starvation and malnutrition.

The state of primary and secondary schools in most rural Africa are particularly poor. Virtually none of the primary or secondary schools are equipped with even basic computers. In the schools of today's developed countries, computers are seen as a necessity. Computers also facilitate a wide range of learning experiences. Unfortunately, more than 90% of children in rural Africa have never seen a computer. We need your kind assistance to solve this drastic situation.

What you can do in support of the African Rural Schools 
You can help rural school children in Africa by:

Desktop Computers

Desktop machines with any peripheral equipment such as monitors, mice, keyboards, modems, cables and power leads.

• Pentium III processor 450Mhz and upwards
• Celeron processor 600Mhz and upwards
• AMD K6 processor 600Mhz and upwards
• Pentium IV processor 1.4Ghz and upwards

If you are unsure check for the Intel Pentium III, IV or Celeron logo. Most systems running Windows 2000 or XP should be acceptable.

We prefer Dell, HP, Compaq and IBM but do accept others. Please ensure any cabinet fittings are unlocked and bios/hard disk passwords are disabled if possible.

We also accept other peripherals and/or spare parts including:

• Hard Disks
• CD Rom/DVD Rom drives
• CD writers
• Blank media
• USB devices/hubs/cables
• Modems
• Sound Cards

Laptop Computers

We accept laptops with Pentium II 233Mhz processors or better with their power adaptors and any peripherals such as external floppy/CD/DVD drives. Please remember to supply any passwords if implemented. Unfortunately we are unable to accept 386, 486, Pentium I or Apple Macintosh equipment.

Printers

We accept any working inkjet and laser printers. Consumables (cartridges and toners) for the printer model being donated would also be helpful.

Networking Equipment

We do not accept Token Ring equipment unless it is already installed in a desktop. Otherwise we accept 10BaseT, 10/100TX. 100TX and above hubs, switches and network cards. When donating such equipment it would be helpful if any required external power supplies are also supplied.

We also accept:

• Wireless equipment
• Cat5 cabling
• Cat5 cable test equipment
• Network Routers and Bridges
• UPS Units, battery not older than 2 years
• Network Print Servers

Other equipment

Other equipment we are happy to receive donations include:

• KVM Switches (with appropriate cables where possible)
• SCSI II, III, W, UW hard disks greater than 4GB
• SCSI controller cards
• Backup units not older than 3 years
• UPS Units with a battery no older than 2 years
• Educational software