Balunywa Foundation involved "Bulungi bwa Nsi" community work. Mutabazi is welcome

The Balunywa Foundation is the association of young people who came together to support one another so as to realize their potential. They train one another and also extend the activities to training others including youth, women and entrepreneurs in the Iganga area. Last weekend, they were involved in the Corporate Social Responsibility. I always pride myself as coming from the industrialized village in the country because our village has a steel rolling mill, Tembo steel rolling mill at Kasolo Iganga. It is a shame that right outside their gate, they had a gutter which was caused by partly their actions of putting a channel on the road side which channel doesn’t take the rain water from the road side. The result has been that people have been falling off boda bodas right in front of the factory. The young people working with several people in the village decided to do “bulungi bwa nsi” and fill the pothole with stones and murram. The laws of the country are interesting. We were told that government will not be pleased that we were filling these potholes in the road. However for the sake of the lives of the people in the area, we went ahead with doing the task. The Foundation was joined by another young social entrepreneur; the +256 group supported the effort making improvements in the lives of the people who use the area. I noted that there are hundreds of Boda bodas that pass this area and this simply was a call for better roads and better transport system in form of buses. When we talked to the mini bus owners who passed by they decried the road as the problem. The Local Chairman of the Lwengo area, Mr. Mutabazi who was recently involved in “bulungi bwa nsi” community work in his area cained people. Mutabazi is a hardworking person who has brought change in Lwengo district and he is loved by his people. His mistake was to bring TV people while implementing his policies.

What Mr. Mutabazi did was controversial yes but then you wonder whether people know that they are poor. No government in this country will have enough funds to do all the roads. Some voluntary work to improve ourselves is necessary. It is tough to remove poverty among people who do not know they are poor.

Celebrating Ugandan Women Entrepreneurs: Prudence Ukkonika

Hardworking, innovative, risk taking and opportunity seeking are features that define Prudence Ukkonika and this is what entrepreneurship is about. Prudence was speaking at the MUBS Entrepreneurship Centre event organized to mark the job entrepreneurship week. Prudence has an interesting story as she used her fees to buy old clothes and take them to Kampala. Her father who was also an entrepreneur had given her the money to pay tuition fees at the college in Kampala.

The buses to Kampala used to leave at 4am and you would get to Kampala after two days. The roads were very bad and there were insecurity so the buses would stop over on the way. Prudence had been to a college in Kampala and she realized there were no old clothes in Kampala at least in the places she visited so she decided to buy them from Kabale and bring them to Kampala. However that day, luck was not on her side, the bus did not take off and she went back home. Being a business man, her father wanted to use the money for something that day and he asked her to give it back to him. The father was furious and thought Prudence was actually not studying. Prudence got cash in Kampala when she finally travelled and used the money to buy groundnuts which she fried herself and gave to the boys who were on a ship to Kalangala. She had seen another opportunity and still took risk. She fried groundnuts herself and wrapped them in old newspapers and gave them to the boys on the ship to Kalangala. She did not want the money back, she requested them to buy pineapples from the island which she sold in Nakawa market. Prudence has a very interesting story and tells it in “a no holds barred” manner.

Her risk taking nerve led her to putting a Charcoal sigiri in her car boot to take it to work so that she can give her customers hot food. She says she did not think a lot about it. The petrol tank is near the area of the boot and she dared to out the sigiri in the boot. Prudence’s story is one of the surprises and good decisions when concept belonged to her deceased son who had started bringing locally made wine to Kampala from Northern Uganda. She exploited the idea and used to sell the wines in jerricans, plastic bottles but now labels her wine, Bella Wine like any other international wine. She said the name Bella meant Belief Leads to Lasting Achievement. She indeed believed and she now sells her wine not only in Uganda but Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya.

I cannot say, Prudence is soft spoken but she is articulate and raw. She is a tough lady who does not tolerate mediocrity. She works closely with employees but it is tough when they make mistakes. She amazed people when she said she doesn’t want to beg when she can do things herself. She was appreciative of President Museveni’s support but the bureaucracy of reaching him and the feeling by many people in the process that they are doing her a favour made her not follow up those promises.