At a Glance

 

One Village is a development organisation focused on working with rural communities in Eastern Uganda. Just One Village Inc was officially founded in 2007 by a young Adelaide woman, Nikki Lovell and has since grown enormously. We now have projects in the sectors of health, education, agriculture and infrastructure. One Village is based on the philosophy that effective and lasting development will only come when the community takes ownership and responsibility for the projects and directs the form that they take. From the day One Village began, our projects have been initiated and driven by the people in Uganda who are passionate about affecting change in their community. 

 

Annual Reports

Download our 2010-2011 annual report

Download our 2009-2010 annual report

Download our 2008-2009 annual report

 

The Story from the Beginning….

 

 

Nikki first went to Uganda in 2005, after completing her Secondary Education, as a volunteer with Student Partnerships Worldwide. She was placed in Namwendwa, a rural village in Eastern Uganda, with three other volunteers, to work as a health educator in both Namwendwa Primary School and St Peter’s Secondary School.

During her time in Uganda, Nikki was overwhelmed by the poverty in the area, but also by the warm, positive, and determined nature of the people. The community were aware of their situation and were passionate about how they could affect real change in their community. Something the community identified as a need was to improve the gender balance and empower females through education. Nikki had realised that it was a male dominant society and had seen females being submissive in class, and many girls being pulled out of school for early marriages. She was inspired that the community wanted to change the general attitude toward females, and decided to help. Before leaving Namwendwa, Nikki and fellow volunteer Jane from England, established ‘St Peter’s Academic Scholarship Scheme for Girls’.  This project originally selected eight girls on academic merit from Namwendwa Primary School and committed to funding their secondary education at St Peter’s Secondary School. 

After returning to Australia, Nikki received a phone call from her friend Florence, the principle of a Nursery School in Namwendwa, with the devastating news that termites had destroyed her school, which had been made of bamboo. Nikki then promised to raise the funds to build a new structure for the school, which could also be used for community events. Nikki sought and gained the support of local media here in Adelaide, and ran fundraising events such as movie nights. Nikki soon found that campaigning for funds and raising awareness of the situation in Uganda became all consuming and deferred her university study to focus on this task. It became apparent that it would be easier to gain support for the projects in Uganda if Nikki registered her work as an official charity, and so Just One Village Incorporated was born. The charity was officially launched in January 2007 and a One Village Australian Committee was established. Nikki returned to Uganda on another self-funded trip for a further six months in 2007. During this time Nikki established a One Village Ugandan Committee, registered One Village Uganda as an organization at a district level, opened a bank account in the name of ‘One Village’ and oversaw the construction of the new Nursery School.      

Since 2007, the One Village Ugandan Committee has worked tirelessly, organising community meetings to discuss and identify the core needs of the community and then coordinating the projects that see their dreams of community development come to fruition. 

The One Village Australian Committee has grown and is now a strong team, with all members bringing unique and vital skills to the table. Many members from the committee have now visited Uganda and formed strong friendships with the Ugandan team and the community of Namwendwa. 

One Village continues to go from strength to strength every year, with projects now in the sectors of health, education, agriculture and infrastructure. The Scholarship Scheme that was initially established now empowers 40 students through Secondary School every year, and has grown to include sponsorship of 38 students in Tertiary Education. Take a moment to look over all One Village projects, and meet our fantastic teams, both in Australia and Uganda – all of who are volunteers. One Village was born from the philosophy ‘From the smallest seed grows change.’ We hope that’s how you feel when you leave our website.