Collaborative GrantProposal:Background-information

The initial email for grant proposal collaboration went out to the people with whom I, Joanne Clemente, have contact in Uganda. Since I am involved with the TATS organization who hosted my trip in Uganda, I contacted Larry Maka.

I also contacted people from Makerere University (Connie Masembe, the Dean) and Kampala University (Daniel Bwanika, Director of Development). I also asked Larry Maka to find a lead person at Kisubi Brothers University as I have been in contact with some teachers there. I also contacted my colleague and travel partner, Dr. Brenda Dressler, who gave HIV/AIDS prevention lectures to teachers and students while we were in Uganda last June. My contact at OLPC where the XO project originated is Adam Holt who passed our inquiry to interested parties. I also contacted Lidet Tilahun who is an OLPC director located in Ethiopia and has much experience in deployments in Africa. She has suggested partnering with WarChild.

I also reached out to two more colleagues: 1- Elizabeth Ross from Harvard, who has successfully deployed an XO project in Uganda (Kasiisi Project) and who is currently in Uganda was also contacted. 2-Kenneth Mwandara who has a Kampala based Technology Center called Silver Shadows who has helped with training and XO repairs.

Another colleague, Nick Doiron, then contacted me as he was a volunteer with Elizabeth Ross’ Kasiisi project. He suggested I contact the NGO , Amagezi Gemaanyi Youth Association (AGYA) (Divinity is lead person) who has since expressed interest in participating and Stuart Campo from Straight Talk magazine (heavy emphasis on HIV/AIDS content). I also reached out to Global Pulse, a think tank in Kampala at his suggestion.

This is how it began.

Since then, many more people have been contacted, many interested in research. While research can be one aspect of this grant application, the main goal is to empower vulnerable children, orphans, many of whom have been victimized by HIV/AIDS.

Thus far, then, we have interest from Kampala University, and Kisubi Brothers as the lead person there will be Vincent Ssekate, the Dean.

So, as of January 12, 2011, this is the background information. From this point forward, we should collaborate on the main page. As people add their contributions, I will edit and place content into different sections of our proposal.

Additional information from Kampala Director of Research-Dr. Ronald Ssemyalo - January 18, 2011- progress is being made:

Dear Joanne,

Thank you so much for your emails and the wonderful project that you are coordinating. I am grateful to be one of the recepients of your emails am assuming on the advise (/inclusion) of Mr Dan Bwanika. I have had a chance of visiting the wiki and I see that alot of work has already been done. The project suggests that Ugandan teachers will be trained in the use of the tools (XO machines-I actually found one of our lecturers using one in Jinja while on a visit there, last week) particularly to teach about HIV/AIDS. You also mentioned that Dr.Brenda Dressler will oversee the curriculum to be used for the pupils. However this November we had a couple of professors visiting our university from Cornell and while we were interacting with our students (Bachelor of Education Biology, Chemistry), we discovered that they too are in great need of a well designed programme (curriculum) on how to teach about HIV/AIDS. Therefore I am suggesting that one addition component of this project would be not only to train the inservice teachers how to use the machines but also to train them on how to desseminate the information. If you find this useful Kampala University would also be glad to collaborate with Dr.Brenda Dressler in desiging a programme to traing the inservice teachers on dessiminating the information that needs to get out there.

Secondly concerning How and who will monitor progress, assess results, keep tabs on student and teacher learning, I believe that we at Kampala University can contribute greatly to this. We have the resource persons as well as already established infrastructure especially in monitoring students and our teachers. We also have a well tested system of assessing and monitoring the results of such a learning programme, If it is acceptable for all we would be glad draft a write up on how this may/will be done. Since Connie may have a better track record on dealing with the USAID grants we would be glad to collaborate with her on designing the whole plan including the monitoring of funds.

Lastly I gladly pledge the resources at our research office to the successful completion of this project I wish to reiterate that will capably work on the tax issues you mentioned, you will recieve answers to the questions you asked Kampala University (in the wiki) before the end of the week. I will endevour to make my contributions on the wiki.

Best wishes,

Director of Research

Kampala University P.O. Box 25454,Kampala-Uganda Tel: +256 792 601 797

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