the great Kisiizi Hospital Bakery project...

The vision:
Some while before we came out on this trip to Kisiizi, we had reflected on how the spare electricity now being generated at night might be used to the benefit of the community and the hospital and we came up with the idea of setting up a bakery.  We wrote up an outline project proposal and sent it to the Management Committee here who approved a scoping exercise to see if the idea is viable.  Thanks to all the individuals who encouraged us to look into it, including members of Standon Parish Church who expressed support.

The aims include
*   providing good quality bread etc
*   helping reduce the cost of living by being competitive in price - this will secondarily help our staff and also mean our patients will not have to spend so much on food so will have more spare to pay hospital bills
*   generate a regular income to the hospital
*   provide employment for a couple of people

Finding local income-generating schemes is important to help Kisiizi be as self-sufficient as possible.  Clearly for the mid-term at least Kisiizi needs to have partnership with supporters outside the country to thrive, but the more local sustainability the better.

Contacts:
On the flight in from UK, our plane from Amsterdam stopped off at Kigali in Rwanda for about an hour before coming on to Entebbe. Ian greeted a Ugandan lady and got talking and found out that her sister is a manager of a big bakery in Kampala.  So we have been in phone contact and hope to meet with her soon.

In the meantime, he visited a new Dutch bakery in Kampala where the co-ordinator was really interested in the idea of a hospital bakery and mentioned a Dutch charity that has set up bakeries in other parts of the country with an emphasis on employing people with physical handicaps who might otherwise find it hard to gain employment.

Then on Saturday morning, after a few false starts going to places only to be told "oh yes, there was a bakery here in the past but it has moved...." we ended up talking with the manager of a very big bakery in Kampala.  This gave us some useful information and an initial financial assessment is suggesting that the project would be viable.  Still a lot to check out but a good start...

The picture shows the old grinding-mill building that we have identified as the likely location for the bakery if it goes ahead.