After teaching Inspire for several consecutive years to the students of Kira Farm Training Centre in Kampala, Amigos Worldwide were still really keen for the course to go ahead this year, regardless of the hurdles put in our way by Coronavirus this year. For the past few years, a team of UK leaders have visited Kira Farm to run the course in person under the leadership of Laura Newall or Sian Campbell-Colquhoun, but this was clearly not going to be possible in a pandemic.
This year brought even more challenges, as the time the students had on Kira Farm was cut short due to a lockdown being imposed by the Ugandan Government. Knowing the importance of the program and the effect it has had on helping the graduate’s success in their new careers, some of the local Amigos staff agreed to work with previous team members in the UK to run the course via video link.
We sent a large parcel of resources, including everything you need to run the course and a full set of manuals out to Uganda and each session was led by one of our key team members in the UK. The Ugandan staff did a wonderful job in supporting the teaching, by leading the small group discussions, running all the craft activities and games, and providing all the hands-on input required to make this a very special week.
Sian said: “Even though lockdown stopped us going to Uganda to teach it this year, the virtual sessions had an incredible effect on the girls. They spoke to us on zoom afterwards of how excited they were about their futures because they now knew they were made ON purpose FOR a purpose.”