Dear Reader

Thank you for your continued readership and positive feedback about our monthly e-newsletter. UCOTA and Pearls of Uganda have had an exciting January! As usual, you will also find news from our member communities, funding opportunities, tourism industry news, and lots more in our e-newsletter. We hope you enjoy your reading!

UCOTA News

Update on Purongo Cultural Centre (PCC):
Purongo is located at the boundary of Murchison Falls National Park, near the Nile Delta. Many stakeholders have come to terms with the fact that conserving the wildlife of this area will only be realized when we have created tangible reasons for communities and land owners to enthusiastically support conservation.

In our January E-newsletter, we reported on the plans of PCC; since then, several meetings have been held in Purongo as well as in Kampala in an effort to speed up the process of bringing to fruition the dream of Purongo Cultural Centre. These meetings involved Purongo community, Local Government, Gulu University, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) and UCOTA. Concrete tasks to be accomplished in the near future were decided on and these include: renovations of the existing structures, equipping the new committee with governance skills, drawing up the constitution, construction of a site toilet facility and finalizing the site plan.

UCOTA Participates in Upendo Workshop:
UCOTA is partnering with NETOP, a Danish international organisation, in a program which sponsors Upendo, a UCOTA member in Northern Uganda. UCOTA has in past years partnered with NETOP in other community programs.

Upendo is a community groups’ Association in Northern Uganda that trains communities in democracy and builds skills in handcraft development. Participants received handcraft training in making tiny replicas/souvenirs of traditional crafts.Community civic educators were also selected to further boost community outreach in terms of democracy training. Before taking on the task, the civic educators will be equipped with bicycles for transport and training skills and materials. Two Danish volunteers attached to the project will help in the capacity building of the civic educators.In the same workshop, a review of the Articles and Memorandum of the Association was carried out and the Annual General Meeting was held in which new office bearers were elected. On the new committee, UCOTA will serve as the secretary, deputized by UPENDO member, Jocipat Ocet.