The Uganda Red Cross started life in 1939 as the Women's Emergency Organisation run by the wives of British colonial officials. From its Kampala office, head of communications Richard Amadro told Beth Watts how the organisation became a fully-fledged Red Cross society and spoke about its current projects.

AN: When was the Uganda Red Cross founded?

RA: The Uganda Red Cross Society started as the Women’s emergency organisation in 1939. The wives of the British colonials living in Uganda ran it. The early activities were mainly based around giving East African troops a little bit of comfort – things like sweaters, socks and soup. Then, in 1941, the organisation became the Ugandan branch of the British Red Cross. Activities developed at this time. The first people-tracing projects were set up as well first aid and home care activities. In 1964, after Uganda had won independence from the British in 1962, we became the fully-fledged Red Cross society. It was established by an act of parliament.

AN: How is the organisation divided up staff-wise?

RA: The Uganda Red Cross is divided into district branches. We have 43 field officers and each one is in charge of one or more districts. We have created new districts in some areas, which is why some field officers look after more than one branch.

AN: What kinds of projects is the organisation concentrating on at present?

RA: We have roughly 10 programmes. Some are countrywide but some are more specific to certain districts. A certain number of our programmes are health-based. One of these is an integrated health care project. This generally involves training in first aid. We train people than then those that were trained are expected to carry out first aid services and also pass their skills on to other members in the community. We go to the communities and see what is needed and then we train people to cope within their own communities. In addition, we also run a ‘first aid for companies' project. It’s a commercial project training people in hotels and industry for example and they pay for the training.

AN: Do the health care initiatives include immunisation projects?

RA: Yes and in fact for our recent immunisation programme we are working hand in hand with the Ministry of Health for mass immunisation of measles. Initially we picked three districts to pilot and the response was overwhelming. We achieved almost 100 percent effective immunisation against measles. And this will become routine now. Right now we have chosen four other districts to focus on.

AN: What have been the most successful projects for the organisation?

RA: Probably blood donor recruitment. This could be seen as the most successful because every year we set targets for how many units of blood we are going to collect countrywide and most of the time we beat the target and get way over what we set.

AN: Since the early 1940s the organisation has been running tracing programmes. Can you explain what this might involve?

RA: The tracing programme is designed to find and reunite missing persons with their families. These people are mainly refugees. People are able to use the Red Cross messaging system, which is where they write messages to relatives at the Red Cross Society and then these are exchanged with other branches in order to try to find the relatives and pass on the message. We have messages from all over the world coming in with people trying to find their relatives. We also organise family reunions. We especially do this with unaccompanied minors there were a lot of unaccompanied children left on their own after the Rwanda genocide.

AN: It must be wonderful to be able to reunite families that have been separated…

RA: It’s very moving to see families being reunited. You can imagine how excited someone would get after being reunited with their family or someone within their family that they thought had been killed. We get photographs of the children sent to different refugee camps and the relatives all clamour round trying to identify their child. And then if they do recognise their child they send a message to the Red Cross and eventually it might be possible that exchanges are made and the children are reunited with their families. It’s a very emotional time and it’s very interesting to see people’s reactions. It’s a great thing.

AN: Do you often target younger members of the communities in your training?

RA: Certainly. We also have a whole programme designed for youth members of the community. We teach leadership, health protection, friendship and humanitarian awareness skills. We have groups in schools that are called 'links' and leaders called 'patrons'. We teach the patrons, who then teach the other children about humanitarian issues and their roles within communities. The youth of today form the backbone of society, they are our strengths and we need to approach people from an early age.

AN: What kind of problems have you faced when trying to implement projects?

RA: One of the problems we have faced in northeast Uganda is trying to locate a group of nomadic warriors who live within a certain region. Sometimes implementing projects with them has been difficult because they move around a lot. To undertake projects in this type of district is a challenge, as you may not get to the mothers and children for immunisation and health care training. To get the chance to approach the communities we go to the community leaders and then they transfer the information and we can implement the project.

AN: Do you have any new programmes coming up for the future?

RA: We have a few that we are intending to launch. One is reintroducing the HIV and AIDS campaign. In the early 1990s there were so many organisations concentrating on the AIDS issue that we withdrew from it, but now there is an increasing need. The project will go hand-in-hand with the blood donor initiative. The project will involve giving counselling for blood donors and AIDS patients. We're already recruiting counsellors. Luckily, Uganda has come a very long way and came up as being a country that deals with the HIV/AIDS crisis very openly. People are talking about it openly and no one is hiding away, keeping secrets. It’s much easier to talk and so easier to implement the projects. In addition to this we will also by trying to push forward a road safety project.

AN: What does the road safety project involve?

RA: The road safety project started last year during Red Cross Week. We started it in Kampala, with drivers being taught about the use of the road. Then we started painting zebra crossings and having radio spots about accidents and prevention. This year we hope to expand to other districts. Every day there are car accidents and it’s common that 20 or so people could die every day because of this. So we thought we’d start with the drivers within Uganda itself and then look at targeting the entry points from Kenya and Rwanda as there are really busy roads around there so we can teach the people around there about the roads and their roles in preventing accidents. Then we will take the project to schools and teach children how to cross roads. We need to train both drivers and pedestrians to be aware.

AN: And local fundraising is another future plan isn't it?

Yes, we are trying to do more local fundraising. 98 percent of our funding comes from national societies, so we feel we should have more local mobilisation of funds. This is one of our new programmes and it’s not easy to motivate local funding when this hasn't been part of the tradition in the culture. We are trying to get big companies to support us. When we had the ebola epidemic, so many local companies came up with things to help. The response was just amazing. Recently we had a mobile telephone company give us 500 million shillings ($280,000), which is a great beginning.

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