Wednesday, 14 Jul 10 - 17:45“Yes, we really are going!”

Chapter 1 of Kathy and Hills’ African Adventure by Kathy Smedley

A story of two friends with one aim – To Make a Difference.

"Wow!" exclaimed Patrick, team manager of the Act4Africa Jinja Team. "42 years. That is surely a long time friend."

I had just been on the phone to Patrick attempting to finalise details of my forthcoming trip to Uganda. When I explained that Hills [Hillary Smeaton] and I had first met 42 years ago on our first day as students he was almost speechless.

Much water has passed under the bridge since those carefree student days.

Travels to numerous countries to work as expatriates, on holiday and as missionaries. Two husbands [one each], jobs, mortgages and five gorgeous children later we are about to embark on our first adventure together in many years. Hills has been expressing a desire to accompany me to Africa for some years and finally...Now is the time!

We fly to Entebbe on July 26th to travel to Kasese in Western Uganda and then on to Jinja
in the east of the country to work alongside the Act4African teams helping them to become more effective in the work they do.

We like to think of ourselves as no different than we were all those years ago but reminders such as "don't forget to take your blood pressure tablets" and the question "how much walking will there be?" tell a different story.

Inside we are still 18 and certainly up for the challenges that lie ahead.

We may be watching Crocodiles
from the sidelines instead of wrestling them but the years of experience we muster between us in the fields of Education and Life can only make up for what we lack in energy.

Our enthusiasm is 100% as is our dedication to making a difference.

As we pack our malaria tablets, long skirts and energy bars we look forward to exciting times ahead as well as hoping the sunshine will make up for all the comforts we leave behind!

Kathy x

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Next chapter..... "All Aboard"

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Tuesday, 13 Jul 10 - 00:15FUNDRAISERs of the MONTH (July) 2010

Chapter 21 of Crazy Fundraising Ideas! by Chris Grieves

Our 'FotM' for July is our very own Jess Carver, nominated by Martin Smedley our CEO.

Jess has been working in the Act4Arica (UK) office for around four months and in that time has had amazing success with Trust Fund Applications - pulling in thousands of pounds for projects in Africa.

‘'I have worked for Act4Africa since March 2010 after spotting their advert for a fundraiser on a graduate internship website." says Jess.

Then she explains;

For the last two years I have worked as a Researcher for the Directory of Social Change (DSC), an infrastructure body providing information and training services to small to medium charities in the UK. In this role I carry out research into funding from trusts, foundations and government sources which is published on DSC's subscription websites and funding directories.

Prior to working at DSC Jess spent most of her time travelling and working overseas, teaching English in Ghana and carrying out Community Development work in Thailand, and travelling around India and South East Asia.

Thanks again Jess from all of us at Act4Africa. Keep up the excellent work! It's great to have you on board.

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Jess will receive a personally signed copy of bestselling author (and friend of Act4Africa's) Paul McGee's new book "Self-Confidence" [The remarkable Truth of Why a Small Change Can Make a Big Difference].

Read more chapters from 'Crazy Fundraising Ideas!'

Thursday, 01 Jul 10 - 10:30Changing 5 million lives in 5 years!

Chapter 1 of 5 million lives in 5 years! by Martin Smedley

As many of you know, Act4Africa has been active for 10 years and we are proud of having successfully changed 1million lives during that period. However we have always relished a challenge and have now set a goal to change 5 million lives in 5 years.

How are Act4Africa going to achieve this?
We know from the feedback we get that we have a high quality training programme which is uniquely interactive and which is valued in the communities. We really feel the need to make this training more readily available to reach much wider geographical population groups. We aim to achieve this through a "train the trainers" programme by which we can train dozens of trainers each year who can then use our programme to change many lives in their own communities. An example of this is in Malawi which has one of the highest national HIV prevalence rates in the world. Bernard is a Malawian who has already been through our rigorous training programme and he will shortly be starting to train a further 60 trainers to deliver our HIV/AIDS and Gender Education and together they can change 20,000 Malawian lives!

We know we have set ourselves a huge challenge but with your support we believe we can break the shackles of this disease and give young people of Africa a hope for a better future.

Read more chapters from '5 million lives in 5 years!'