Challenges in Uganda
In 1989, Medair’s first-ever Ugandan mission did not start well. All of the Medair funds had been entrusted to a prominent businessman who promptly disappeared!
Thankfully, the money was eventually recovered, and spent to help Ugandans moving from displacement camps back to their home villages.
Medair learnt a valuable lesson about stewardship as a result, one that helped shape the organisation’s overall practices of accountability today.
By the end of the resettlement project, Medair had enough money remaining to build four schools for the returning children. According to co-founder Josianne André, "this proved to be a tool for reconciliation among enemy groups, as they were obliged to work together towards a common goal”.
Medair received many expressions of gratitude from the country’s political leaders on behalf of the thousands of beneficiaries, when the programme ended in July 1989.
In 2000, new crises brought Medair back to work in the most vulnerable districts of Uganda.
Twenty years after Medair first went to Uganda, we are assisting the people of Pader District with resettlement as they too move out of displacement camps. We are also serving the precarious Karamoja region where conflict, drought, and underdevelopment afflict the most vulnerable.
