Huts For Peace

Hello everyone!

So I finally have a sense of what I am doing for Huts for Peace.  There was absolutely nothing set up when I got to Lira.  After talking to GLI it became obvious that they had no idea either.  I met with a woman named Jane yesterday who is the founder of a NGO called Children of Peace Uganda.  It focuses on taking former child soldiers and helping them reintegrate into the community, along with providing them with jobs and therapy.  The idea of Huts for Peace is building huts for children led households. However, there is no engineer, no budget, and no direction with the project.  The budget that they did come up with put each hut at 2,500 USD per hut; which is way too much. 

After talking to GLI my job will not be to build huts, but instead create a report that outlines every detail of the project.  So today I am going to meet with Jane to let her know Huts probably will not be built for awhile.  Then I am meeting with an engineer that I found who is willing to help for free.  I plan on getting the layout of the huts and the materials that are imperative.  Tomorrow I am going to meet with a few of the families that are benificiaries and see what the huts in their communities look like so we can ensure that anything that is being built matches the community. Then on thursday I am going out and pricing everything that is on the list of materials from the engineer.  So I will create a budget for the project, assess the need of the area, and see if this project is even needed here.

So this is nothing like what I though I would be doing, but that is okay.  Hopefully this will pay forward eventually and help someone!