IDEAS For Us – Uganda was the first international branch of IDEAS For Us. Originally based in Kampala, the capital city, IDEAS For Uganda has now spread to dozens of primary and secondary schools across the country where students and community members come together to launch action projects.
Intellectual decisions on environmental awareness solutions for Uganda (IDEAS For Uganda) is a self-governing organization and extension of the IDEAS Movement, guided by the efforts of IDEAS For Us, an official 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization in the United States and accredited by the United Nations. IDEAS For Uganda is legally recognized in Uganda and mandated to operate in the whole country.
Mission
IDEAS For Uganda as well as IDEAS at large stand to educate; engage; and empower people of all ages in humanitarian and environmental sustainability through research, awareness, and actions. We focus on the following pillars: waste, water, food, energy, and ecology. Health and Poverty eradication are key cross-cutting issues we are promoting as well.
Please reach out!
contact@ideasforus.org and we will connect you with the current leaders in their respective cities OR follow IDEAS For Uganda on Facebook and Instagram to learn more.
Founded in 2012 by Masereka Adidass, Matovu Paul, and Sinamakosa Isaac, IDEAS For Uganda has grown to be our largest international presence on the African continent.
Objective: Due to the poor farming practices along the shoreline of the river Nyamwamba, erosion and flooding has wreaked havoc amongst the Kasese Municipality. In response, we plan to line the most vulnerable parts of the riverbank with clumping bamboo trees to prevent soil erosion and flooding of the community. By helping those displaced by the flooding with everyday needs including food, clean water, clothes, and providing education to the local farmers on sustainable farming practices we hope to reduce the risk of flooding and erosion happening in the future.
Goal 1A: Heal the soil along the river bank with bamboo shoots to reduce future flooding.
Goal 1B: Provide humanitarian aid to the displaced refugees.
Objective: Through solar light fire technology, IDEAS For Us – Uganda plans to improve the livelihoods of youth in the Kiburara Village with entrepreneurial green job creation skills, supporting a deepened local economy they are in control over, and training in all stages of the business model or cycle, such as business idea development, business planning, and business implementation. We hope to productively harness the solar energy resource that is abundant in the Kasese district and expand these ideas towards other IDEAS For Us chapters.
Goal 1A: Have this project pilot resources and demonstrations that will directly benefit in and out of school youths’ in the Kiburara community as a result of the implementation of a solar-powered mini factory that produces sellable foods for money.
Goal 1B: Curb down on the destruction of trees in bordering national parks by preventing economic dependence on the firewood they provide, creating a positive co-existence between the community and the parks.
Objective: Demonstrate practical community organic gardening in Kasese Municipality western Uganda, researching organic farming effectiveness in terms of yields and viability and equipping farmers and schools with transformational skills from traditional/orthodox farming methods to contemporary organic farming techniques.
Goal 1A: To sensitize the citizenry/farm product consumers and local farmers about the benefits of organic food products and the general planet sustenance.
Goal 1B: Support and encourage schools in continuously producing healthy food for their learners and undertake the food crop school gardening initiative.
Objective: Promote our food pillar in urban communities. We ask IDEAS For Us to help us fundraise in order to create 200 Vertical Farms in 2019 that will improve beneficiary food security and incomes, in Kasese Municipality, Kampala city, and Wakiso District towns, as well as improving IDEAS visibility.
Goal 1A: Impact more than 1,200 individuals by bringing fresh produce into the community paired with educational programming.
Goal 1B: Compost 28,800 kgs of biodegradable municipal waste which will minimize local food waste.
Objective: Plan to create a mini-irrigation project to provide water and fertilizer from fish to improve crop harvests in Kiburara community, Kasese District, Uganda. This community has a problem with dry weather conditions despite it being near a water system, with two flowing rivers.
Goal 1A: Have this project represent a demonstration that will directly benefit 50 households economically and nutritionally.
Goal 1B: Plan a crop planting to start utilizing the irrigation demonstration site coordinated by skilled Agricultural extension workers from IDEAS For Uganda VMG networks, working as guides to the local farmers.
Objective: In response to the above health challenges, IDEAS For Us – Uganda in partnership with Mase Medical Foundation plan to organize one mobile clinic per month in Eastern and Western Uganda, benefiting between 500-1000 people per clinic.
Goal 1A: Every four months we shall identify between 500-1000 malnourished children in every region and enroll them in further specialized health service provision in conjunction with other health service providers in Eastern and Western Uganda.
Goal 1B: Decrease levels of malnutrition in the targeted districts as per government annual reports, which will lead to an increase in active school-going children.
Objective: Engage the male and female youths in community mobilization activities in two districts of Uganda.
Goal 1A: Support the youths in and out of School to plant carbon trees in public and private land.
Goal 1B: Empower and engage the community and school chapters in timely vigorous cleanups.
Objectives: Provide an outlet to clean and safe drinking water to a Kiburara trading center that has over 80% of its population in dire water access scarcity.
Goal 1A: Create an environment for the residents in this Kiburara trading center that will improve their living standards, especially women.
Objective: Empower a motivated IDEAS For Uganda team in coordinating impact-oriented actions of community and academic institutions based branches/chapters across the Country.
IDEAS For Uganda has conducted over 43 projects in all five pillars of sustainability in more than a dozen cities across the country. Their work has won awards, including the Holt Prize for a vertical gardening system, aimed at helping refugees grow food in confined spaces.
Click Here to View IDEAS For Uganda’s 2019 Project Proposal
In October 2011, A friend of Masereka Adidas in the United States, Wendy Noto, became interested in researching environmental challenges in Uganda focusing on water supply. Water as well as sustainability threats like deforestation, wastes, extreme seasons affecting food production, and destruction of ecology were all discussed.
Wendy Noto met with Clayton Louis Ferrara, a leader for IDEAS For Us, to work on environmental sustainability focusing on five pillars of water, waste, ecology, food, and energy.
Through Wendy’s network, Adidas befriended Clayton, and the timing could not have been better. Clayton is an environmentalist and became greatly concerned with the Mabira Forest deforestation that was occurring at the time in Uganda. As the relationship between Clayton and Adidas matured, Clayton suggested that Adidas open an IDEAS chapter in Uganda where he promised necessary support.
Adidas Masereka as a medic could not stand alone forming and mobilizing Ugandan Youths to form an NGO. Therefore, he contacted Sinamakosa Isaac, a close friend that was already in the civil society sector. Masereka and Isaac started working on paperwork, funded by themselves, and began to mobilize communities, beginning with Kasese District in Western Uganda.
Adidas has, since then, acted as a President/ED and Isaac as an executive advisor/Programs manager.
Check out this music video composed by the community of IDEAS For Uganda
