Land Donated for Meaningful Volunteer's School

Malcolm signs the paperwork

Mrs and Mr.Wabudeya Stephen of Sironko have kindly agreed to donate some land for the construction of Meaningful Volunteer's solar-powered school in Eastern Uganda.  The land is very close to the Meaningful Volunteer's guest house in Buyaya.

Meaningful Volunteer identified a need for a school after it conducted a detail censusof the area.  It was discovered that practically no child under the age of nine could read a single letter, let alone read.  Practically no child under the age of twelve could read triplet words such as: cat, dog, man, and hen.

The school will teach English and computer literacy to both adults and children.

The school is also being built in partnership with the School for Andy movement.  Andy Manley died tragically in a house explosion in Madison on November 9th. Andy was a passionate teacher and the school is being built as a memorial to him. 

 

School For Andy Partnership

Meaningful Volunteer is happy to announce a partnership with the "School For Andy" project.

Andy Manley was resident of Madison Wisconsin and tragically died in a house explosion. Andy was a passionate educator and great all round guy.

The school the Meaningful Volunteer is building in Uganda will be built in his honour. 

Check out the School For Andy site to find out ways you can contribute.

Another Great Year for Grassroots Uganda

This news item comes from Lee Koelzer, the coordinator for Meaningful Volunteer's Grassroots Uganda fair trade initiative in Uganda.

Hello Everyone!

Thankfully, 2010 was another great year for Grassroots Uganda, and I want to thank you all for your support!

With your help we were able to bring 44,399,000ush ($22,199.50) to our women's groups, and a whopping 35,618,200ush ($17,809) to our newly created Artist Co-op!

We were also able to contribute 9,25,800ush ($4,627.90) to our small scale community developement work/ special projects. These include caring for the Jinja Orphans, the Flavia Benefit project,and Building a Latrine for Busy Bee Nursery School, amongst others.

Also, I'm happy to announce that we now have COIN EARRINGS available! We are featuring only a basic design at the moment, but we'll see how styles progress.

If you are interested in where to buy GRU products, or becoming a GRU vendor, please contact me!

peace, Lee

Mama Pamba Radio Interview

Malcolm Trevena - founder of Meaningful Volunteer - recently gave a radio interview about Mama Pamba - Meaningful Volunteer's upcoming fair trade fashion project.

Rubber Soul Global Event for World AIDS day

Meaningful Volunteer is delighted to announce a massive fundraiser across four countries and three continents to mark World AIDS Day on December 1st!

Funds from this event will go to a number of HIV charities including Meaningful Volunteer. Meaningful Volunteer will use the money to build a solar-powered school in the HIV ravaged village of Buyaya in Eastern Uganda.

Check out the home page for Rubber Soul here.

Events will be held in the following cities:
 

• Seoul, South Korea
  Sixteen bands will rock out at three different venues in the Hongdae area.

• Vancouver, Canada
  Ten bands will perform at the University of British Columbia

• Sydney, Australia
  Five bands will perform at the Lewisham Hotel followed by a DJ

• Madison, U.S.A.
  A dining event at Bradbury's will host 40 people with the proceeds going to Rubber Soul.

Merchandise from Grassroots Uganda and Little Travelers will be sold at all events.



21 Nov 2010

Fair Trade Show at My Best Friend's Closet

Meaningful Volunteer will partner with My Best Friend's Closet to bring you some great fair trade craft from Uganda and the Philippines.  Our artists from both Grassroots Uganda and the Payawpao Orchids will be featured.

To celebrate the partnership, we'll be having a fair trade event at My Best Friends Closet on the 9th December. 

Staff from Meaningful Volunteer will be at the event from 11 am to 5pm to talk about the craft and how buying it empowers many women around the globe.

My Best Friends closet is in Vancouver, Canada at 3190 Cambie Street.

Make sure you become a Facebook fan of My Best Friend's Closet here. 

 

A Note of Caution on Bed Net Coverage

Over at Malaria No More website, Ben Brophy makes the following observation:

Several malaria advocates here expressed concern about bed net coverage. 

Once universal coverage is reached, will donors think that we have finished the job? What about when the bed nets need to be replaced in 3 years – at a time when the Global Fund, as a result of the recent replenishment, will have precious few resources for new investments? 
[...]

This is a very real and pertinent observation.  It is not enough to hand out mosquito nets.  It is not enough to train people in their use.

Anyone who has ever slept under a mosquito net will tell you the nets rip and tear.  

We are well aware of this here at the Malaria Operation.  One of the keys steps in our process is coordinating the follow up visits.  

We take a GPS measurement at every house we visit. This allows us to know the exact location of the house.  We keep all this information in our Household Database.

This makes follow up visits easy to coordinate.  We can tell our volunteers go here, here and here.  They can then find the households very easily with a simple hand held GPS device.  An iPhone would work just as well!


 

Mama Pamba Launch Event

Mama Pamba is up and running!  

The 6th of November saw Mama Pamba launch via a combination fundraiser-launch event at a bowling event in Canada.  The bowling event was chosen to make it as family friendly as possible.

Over $US1,000 was raised.  This money will be used to purchase sewing machines, tailor-quality scissors, and other supplies to get us up and started.  

Check out a video from the event below!

Founder of Meaningful Volunteer featured in Korean Herald

For many expat English teachers in Korea, life is comfortable, with most provided with a free apartment and enough money to make savings at the end of each month. 

But for Malcolm Trevena, who before coming to Korea had a successful career as an IT consultant in his native New Zealand, his job teaching English in Suwon was keeping him from his true vocation a life of activism.

Read the full article here. 

3 Nov 2010

New Website Released

Meaningful Volunteer is delighted to announce its new website.

We've spent a lot of time working on the new website based on feedback from our volunteers.

We now have a tight relationship between our project and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Each of our projects also prominently display the information that you need to know: program costs, where you will be housed, country information and who your support staff will be.

So, take a look around and let us know what you think!