Volunteers from around the world have worked within the rural setting of Ruhanga in south-west Uganda for several years helping develop community projects that support young people, and their families establish a better future. The projects to date include a successful development school, now attended by over five hundred local children, workshops and a gravity well bringing clean, piped water into the community. A volunteer can take part in multiple projects whereas in other organisations a volunteer is often stuck to the one thing they sign up for.
Since 1990 the Human Development Report has published the Human Development Index (HDI) which provides a composite measure of three basic dimensions of human development: health, education and income. Uganda’s HDI is 0.456, which gives the country a rank of 161 out of 187 countries with comparable data, placing Uganda below the regional average.
By volunteering, visiting as a tourist, completing a medical elective, or donating. You will help improve the health, education, and income of people in the region. This is because the McNeil Medical Centre is a project within a Ugandan NGO called ”Stand on Your Own”, which consists of: The Ruhanga Development School, an expanding vocational training centre; tourism generating projects and workshops run in the local fishing villages and Queen Elizabeth National Park safaris. Stand On Your Own’s website is here: http://standonyourown.org/ and talks about these projects in more depth.
Volunteering and placements are usually done by International applicants, because this is not a job offer –there is no payment and in addition volunteers will pay their own costs for accommodation, meals and all travel.