Uganda: Don’t drop the ball – back to the grass roots

One of our drought-resistant vegetable gardens

Moses writes: At Kitovu Life Teen Youth Ministry here in Masaka, Uganda, we have started a campaign to get more young people involved in our great generation.

CAFOD’s campaign ‘Don’t Drop the Ball on Climate Change’ is where we decided to start. But we’ve taken it quite literally, back to the grass roots.

The continuing effects of climate change here have caused widespread drought. The soil is very dry and our traditional crops no longer grow well. So we joined up with five schools and in a very practical fight for climate justice.

We asked each school to plant a garden with different vegetables which can grow in dry soil. They are drought-resistant. We now have ten school gardens and the young people have been teaching their families how to plant these gardens which still produce food during the drought.

Just recently I went back to one school: Butale Mixed Community School. Those young people are living a great generation life. The plants have grown in the young people’s gardens as you can see in our photographs. And their efforts have caught the attention of our Community Chairman. A few weeks ago I received a call from him telling me he wanted to discuss our campaign. I will let you know how it goes next month.

We would like to invite more schools – primary and secondary – as well as youth groups to participate. The little we can do, we will do it. We are proud to be making a difference.

You can see our posts at facebook.com/CAFODGreatGeneration where we’ll be talking about this and how we are using sport to address injustice with CAFOD’s Olympic activities.

About the author: Moses Kasozi works for Our Lady of Sorrows Kitovu Life Teen Youth ministry a community based catholic youth ministry established with a mission of leading teens closer to Christ and improve the welfare of communities in Uganda and the rest of the world through evangelism integrated with community development.