Uganda Visit 2017

Blayney's Story

Hello, my name is Blayney and I am part of the Marketing team with World Vision Ireland.  On Saturday I am travelling with my colleague Carmel to Uganda to visit some of our programmes over there and to see first hand how your generous donations are spent in our Area Development Programmes (ADPs). This will be my first time in the field and I am very excited to see how our programmes work on a day to day basis.

We have a busy schedule planned, starting off in Kampala where we will visit the World Vision national office there. This is a great opportunity to meet with some of our Ugandan colleagues, get a better understanding of  all of the hard work they do and how we could collaborate better in the future. We will then be travelling to Busia a town in the Eastern Region of Uganda. Here we will be able to visit two of our ADPs; Busitema and Lunyo, and over the space of three days we will be visiting a school, a health centre, a literacy centre and a water project funded by our sponsors. The water project we will be visiting is funded by the generous Bank of Ireland staff fund.

"What I am most looking forward to is meeting sponsored children and their families."

We will also get a chance to meet with farmer’s groups, beekeeping groups, a citizen’s voice and action group (this is a local advocacy group) and savings groups.

In Lunyo we will be meeting with members of a Child Protection committee to learn more about the different child protection issues in the community and how teachers, local leaders, faith leaders and police are working together to address them with the support of World Vision.

What I am most looking forward to is meeting sponsored children and their families. Everyday in the office we see the exchange of various letters between sponsors and sponsored children and it will be moving to see  how those friendships have changed lives. I am really excited to be  able witness our programmes first hand and to be able to report it all back to you.

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Any questions you may have please Facebook message us or Tweet us @WorldVisionIre and I will personally get back to you.

 

Carmel's Story

French-Iranian, born in Casablanca, Morocco. My family moved to France as political refugees when I was two years old. The passion for humanitarianism began when, as a twenty year old, I moved to Bolivia to work with children and youth. Here I started a project called 'Youth Can Move the World', which focused on empowering young people to believe in their own abilities and potential to transform the society they live in.

I worked very closely with Nur University in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Following my time in Bolivia, I moved to the United States where I taught French, Spanish and Foreign Culture to children and youth in schools and also worked in community building with refugee communities from Cuba, Rwanda, DRC and Mexico. I sat on the Board of the French Alliance of the Greater Phoenix as their Public Relations Officer.

"My aim is to represent the voice of the most vulnerable children, families and communities"

On moving to New York, I worked at the United Nations Headquarters in the Department of Public Information as well as in the Office of the secretary-general, at the Protocol and Liaison Service. 

I hold a Master of Philosophy in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and speak four languages, French, English, Spanish and Farsi. I am currently serving as the Advocacy and Policy Officer at World Vision Ireland, an International child focussed Organisation working in more than 100 countries and serving more than 100 million people across the world. 

World Vision specialises in humanitarian and relief work, community development and advocacy. My aim is to represent the voice of the most vulnerable children, families and communities by inspiring, informing and engaging decision makers, and also the general public, to be active global citizens in our fight against poverty and injustice and in building sustainable and peaceful societies.

What I am excited about this field: to meet our dear World Vision colleagues in the ground that work so hard, and most importantly, to meet the children, families and communities

What I am excited about this field: to meet our dear World Vision colleagues in the ground that work so hard, and most importantly, to meet the children, families and communities we work with and to hear about their experiences, their lives, their dreams and hopes as well as their challenges.

This visit will also be a wonderful learning opportunity to see our different programmes in the field of Maternal and Child Health, Nutrition, Children and Youth participation, Gender, Child Protection and many more. I am already humble by it all before it even started!

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