UgandAid gets underway

The RSK UgandAid team are a week into the 2020 trip. Emily Wilkinson (RSK landscape), Antonio Sanchez (RSK acoustics), Linda York (RSK geosciences) and Nick Thornton (Up and Under, an RSK company) are in Uganda, East Africa, supporting UgandAid’s 2020 village community project.

Emily, Nick, Antonio and Linda with RSK-sponsored student Dan

UgandAid organises annual volunteering trips and projects to help the community in Njeru. This year, 22 people from across the UK have joined the trip to help revamp the Nile Vocational Institute (NVI) and engage in community projects in nearby Jinja. Since 2002, UgandAid has sponsored 700 students through vocational training courses at NVI, including RSK-sponsored students Amos and Dan.

Now, a week in, great progress has been made on the NVI renovation. The RSK team has been revamping the workshops, including cleaning, painting, and improving the classroom facilities. They were joined by some familiar faces from RSK Uganda, who visited NVI to help with the decorating and meet RSK’s sponsored student, Ngwabusa Dan. With all the help, two classrooms were finished in record time!

Antonio getting to work decorating the classroom

RSK Uganda joins the RSK UgandAid team at NVI

“The RSK Uganda team comprises 11 Ugandans, Matt from the UK and Rasim from Abu Dhabi – all of whom were an absolute delight to work with and chat to,” says Emily Wilkinson. “Linda, Nick and Antonio and I were very happy to meet and spend time with our colleagues.”

“RSK’s sponsored student Dan is a very polite and quite a shy young lad; however, he seemed extremely pleased to meet so many people from RSK who wanted to know his story and care about him,” Emily adds. “It was perfect that RSK Uganda was with us because Dan’s English is not very strong and they were able to talk to him in his native language, which enabled him to connect with the team and feel loved.”

RSK has provided support to UgandAid for the past two years, with employee representatives joining the trip in 2018 and 2019, respectively. We are also providing an ongoing financial contribution that has enabled RSK to sponsor Dan through two years of vocational training at NVI.

Next on the agenda for the team will be visiting the town of Jinja to help with local projects, a picnic for the UgandAid sponsored students along the banks of the River Nile and a celebratory sports day at NVI!

You can keep up with the team throughout the rest of the trip on the UgandAid blog.