The story of Lungujja Women's Association (LWA) and information technology (IT) started like a joke.

It was in November 2000 when Florence Kaddu, an LWA member, contacted Dorothy Okello of WOUGNET on a personal basis. Dorothy Okello encouraged her to join the WOUGNET mailing list and start receiving free mails.

Florence Kaddu subscribed (for free) to the WOUGNET mailing list and in February 2001 she received (just like the many other subscribers) a message about Keys to Information Technology and Education (KITE). This organization was interested in small groups which could utilize IT for group activity and improve their knowledge on IT if already in use or the group could be introduced to IT for the very first time.

For the LWA it was the latter as only one member of the Association had been introduced to IT (Florence Kaddu) and the rest of the 40 or so members had no idea except for the telephone.

Florence Kaddu applied to KITE. Below is an excerpt of that application:

The organisation needs the computer to help them become trainers of trainees for the future as many children are dropping out and we feel we could teach them a few skills which would help them become useful despite dropping out of school.

The other reason is to help women get a hands on knowledge of a computer many still fear and feel scared to even try to touch it thus we need to demystify this machine!

Our association is a learning centre therefore any one will be welcome to use the services to get information and even how to network with other organisations.

A few months later, a pleasant surprise mail was sent to Florence through her account flokaddu@yahoo.com that LWA had been selected for the donation and of all things it was the FIRST INTERNATIONAL PARTNER WITH KITE!!!!!

This was unbelievable but true!

The donation finally arrived in March 2002 with a full computer system and a dial up Internet connection. What more, the connection charges were fully paid for - including electricity and telephone for a period of one year.

The women of the Association fall in the age range of 22 - 60 years but it is very surprising that they have embraced this IT with such earnest that this has increased our bills to more than 50% due to the constant usage of the dial up connection and telephone line. At first we thought we could connect for 12 hours but due to high demand we went for the 24 hour connection which is $45 per month, with telephone bills going as far as $50 per month.

The problem so far is that the trainer (Florence Kaddu) has to come physically to the office to switch on the computer and then stay on her cell phone to give user support to the women. This is because the women still fear to switch on the machine (ekyuma in our local language) in her absence.

For this matter, LWA is seeking for further assistance from interested partners in form of cash donations to be able to sustain itself beyond 2002 when the KITE donation depletes. At the same time we need to have a volunteer who can help the women in the absence of Florence Kaddu who stays one hour away from the LWA office.

Thanks go to KITE especially to Chloe Puett, the Communications Director, and to Dorothy Okello of WOUGNET who even visited the group on July 24, 2002. See photo gallery below.

To offer any form of assistance please contact the LWA at our new email address lwa@afsat.com or via flokaddu@yahoo.com.

For further details about LWA and the computer project please visit: http://www.wougnet.org/Profiles/lungujja.html or http://www.kiteinc.org

Last update: August-19, 2002