La Lona (La Lona.Org)

Our Project: Over the past few years, we have set out to build a glass blowing studio that created ART while working and training members in the community. We have been successful!! We trained studio members in glass blowing, held art exhibitions focusing on glass art and managed to build a business working with local hotels and restaurant groups.

Our Challenge: With growth comes challenges, challenges to learn from and make necessary adjustments. One of our biggest challenges is POWER. Currently our furnaces and our annealer run on electricity and gas which is not only expensive but is also an unreliable power source in Uganda. When power unexpectedly goes out, we suffer from the loss of products in production and lose days having to reheat the furnaces.

Our Solution: Through research and discussions with our mentors we have come up with a solution, convert our equipment to operate on used oil collected from local business. Not only will this transition improve our production and training workshops it will also fall in line with our intention of being a GREEN business focused on recycling and upcycling waste within our community

Learn more about our community projects and impact

This fundraiser is hosted by our community partners at La Lona .

You can make a difference by donating today to La Lona (La Lona.Org).

Dedicated to supporting visionaries and change makers. Our mission is to lend guidance, mentorship, financial, and strategic support directly to artists, entrepreneurs, and community leaders making a difference in their own under-served communities in East Africa.

Hello, everyone, my name is Angella Summer Namubiru, and I am the director and co-founder of Blacare, with Blacare foundation, we are fundraising for a gravity water system and a water tank that will give access to water security for over 50 families in Mbata Village, Kasese while creating community resilience to climate change.

You have seen me in TikTok videos showing you the beautiful Rwenzori mountains. Mbata is in the mountains of the moon, and Rwenzori is in Uganda. Our community is experiencing a challenge of access to water, as the major water source is not a convenient place for collection. Most families have to walk for over 2 kilometres in the mountains approximately one-hour return journey and it's mostly children and women that carry the jerricans on their heads and face a security problem walking long distances by themselves in the mountains collecting water for family use.

The good news is that, once the campaign is a success, it will solve water problems for over 50 families and a community coffee development nursery bed that supplies free coffee seedlings to the mbata community and a community church.

Through my social media platforms, I will take you through the entire process of setting up the water system. And share the outcomes and short stories about the beneficiaries in the community.

Why is this campaign so important?

At the beginning of the month of February 2023, I received a devastating phone call from a family that I support, one of the young girls 13 years (name withheld) had gone to collect water for the family and disappeared for 2 days when she was later found by some community members, she had been sexually assaulted and this broke me down. Currently, investigations are happening. On the positive side, the girl's health is safe. But this has to stop because the family and other families will still need water. I urgently need your support to set up this so we can be able to save young people from these horrific encounters.

Thank you so much in advance. I believe in this new age, no children and women should walk two kilometres to collect water for drinking and general home use. I cannot help the entire village on my own, but with your support, we can start with 50 families and we can do this if we only come together. Angella Summer Namubiru.

Note: This fundraiser is being hosted by La Lona a US based non-profit organization and all money raised will go directly to Angella's project

After spending the last year visiting Uganda and working with our programs, we have noticed that the hardest hit demographic are children. Schools in Uganda have been closed longer than any other country in the world. The high price of internet access puts online school out of reach for 80% of children. Over 10 million primary and secondary students have been home from school, and it is estimated that 30% of these students will never return when schools finally do reopen due to the economic hardships their families have faced. (There is no free public education in Uganda - families must pay tuition.)

What have these kids been doing over the past year??

Many children are now working on the streets selling fruit, face masks (ugh!) and even mining for gold. Young girls are losing hope about returning to school and are opting to get married and starting families.

What can we do about it??

We wish there was a way to get all these children back in school, but that is out of our hands  We plan to partner with Afrika Arts Kollective and create a La Lona Children’s Art Studio and Library in Kyebando, one of the poorest communities of Kampala.  Our program will offer structure, accountability, and new creative outlets for the children who live there. AAK is an established member of this community and has a successful record of bringing arts and training programs to its adults. 

We have secured a location next door to AAK’s existing community art space, Ekilawuli Arts Studio, where we will offer free children’s art classes. We intend to build 6-week programs for a group of children of all ages, with an intentional focus on recruiting girls to join our classes. Girls are often given domestic chores when not at school and are conspicuously absent from the groups of kids playing in the streets. This program will offer a structured, supervised environment where girls and their families can be confident in their safety and feel at ease learning and socializing. We will conclude each session with a community exhibition to showcase the students work and to share our love of art with the community.

Our instructors will be both local and international artists along with university students who intern at AAK giving a range of mediums for the students to learn.

What we need??

We are looking to raise $12,000 to set up a creative space that will host our children’s program, an Artist in Residence Studio and provide salaried instructors and supplies for a year for roughly 100 children.