BIDS (Building Community Initiatives for Development and Self Reliance) is a new partner organisation of TDT. Their belief is that with some input from the organisation the target beneficiaries can take a lead role in designing solutions to the problems that affect their lives. A businessman called Nelson Ogwok started this charity with three other men about 5 years ago. They started saving some money thinking when they had some funds they would decide what project to start seeing as there was no shortage of ideas.
Their board of directors is made up people we know already namely David Okello – Chairman (PAG Kumi); Moses Egayu – Director of COU TEDDO and Sam Emenyu (PAG Soroti). The first project was a health clinic which has a doctor/pharmacist and a nurse. There is a small pharmacy and a consulting room, treatment room and a couple of restrooms.
During 2017 TDT supported BIDS with a grant of £3000.
Some of this was used to support 75 beneficiary households in Angorok Village with seed distribution specifically aimed at the elderly, people living with HIV, people living with disability and child headed households. The success of the distribution and support provided in cultivation techniques means that some of the households have more than doubled their farms with the expectations of higher yields in July, 2018.
An irrigation and tree planting project in Aloet and Amoroto aims to improve household livelihoods through irrigation and production of high market value vegetables such as tomatoes, onions and passionfruit. Here BIDS also have a tree planted project which uses improved fast growing Eucalyptus so that inside 3 years it produces poles suitable for use as scaffolding. Another harvest can be made from 8 year old trees for building timber with some left for 12 years when the wood can be used in furniture.
Visiting the irrigation and tree planting project 2017
A further project supported 25 Households with apiary management and the input of seeds, in particular peanut, in Angorok Village aiming to improve household income and nutrition levels. A total of 82 hives were purchased. The target beneficiaries were those living with HIV and the disabled and their families and on the annual visit in 2018 the families were keen to tell TDT how their diet and overall health has improved as a result of the project. 30 household members were trained on the basics of apiary management and 5 selected members were also taken through an intensive training on different types of bees, site management, threats to bees, control measures, communicating with bees and how to harvest and store honey. It is expected that they then share this knowledge with the remaining members of the group. The community are now working together to package and market the honey produced for sale locally.
The procured bee hives
Training on apiary management and how to create an aroma that will attract the bees encouraging them to colonise the hives.
In 2020 TDT was awarded a grant from UKAID as part of the Small Charities Challenge Fund working with BIDS to provide 4 boreholes in four villages in the area, details are in the post linked below.
Video clip of celebration at Angorok from the Annual Visit 2018
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