A Tale of Desperation!

It is slightly past 10 o'clock in the morning in Budumbula Trading Centre, Kamuli District. As I wait for my hosts to pick me up, I see a group of well-able young men carry a game board and instinctively, I pulled out my camera and took a snap.

Wait a minute! What on earth are these guys up to with this board so early in the day?" I wondered. Are you thinking what am thinking? Probably. Yes, these youthful guys, like many of their peers across the nation, are going to play themselves silly in the morning.

Uganda having the world's youngest population with over 78% of its population below the age of 30. With just under eight million youth aged 15-30, we have one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Sub-Saharan Africa and the fact that a big chunk of our aging civil servants are not ready to relinquish the few jobs available, some of our youths resort to.gambling, betting and so on.

"Who cares?" one of the youths retorted when I asked why they waste their precious time in the morning to just play board games. "I think someone indeed does care. Organizations like Sonrise, Fundibots, Iris Mission Africa, Mercylink Africa, The Aliguma Foundation and so many others do care" I responded. Then it dawned on me that much as we might all care about the people in these communities, we have limitations and that's why partnerships are very important in our kind of work.

Knowing that poverty is one of the major causes of all vices especially in Africa, we at Iris Mission Africa, are committed to empowering our communities especially youths to fight poverty, unemployment and other injustices thru Art, Photography & Film.

You can partner with us to help make this dream a reality.

Together, we can make this world a better place.