Kenilworth-Uyogo Friendship Link

The link started in 1979, when the people of Kenilworth raised over £2,400 during the UN’s International Year of the Child project to enable a Mother and Child clinic to be built and equipped in the village of Uyogo in the Tabora Region of Tanzania, using local materials and labour.

The clinic was completed three years later. Since then Kenilworth has maintained a friendship link by correspondence, exchange visits to Uyogo and raising funds to equip the clinic and support of other projects. Uyogo is a large but relatively remote rural village near the town of Tabora in the district of Urambo in NW Tanzania. The objectives of the link are the protection of health, the advancement of education and the relief of poverty of the people of the village of Uyogo.

After the initial project of building the Mother and Child Clinic the charities next priority was tackling the lack of clean water supplies, inadequate sanitation and contaminated drinking water being the major cause of the spread of disease and a high death rate. Initially they supplied funding for the building of wells and adequate latrines. However, with the changing level of the water table, the wells have now been replaced with a Deep Bore Hole, completed in 2009. Water Harvesting tanks were then installed near the village school, collecting and conserving rain water running from the school’s gutters. Subsequent projects improved the supply of water to the village by fitting pumps to the existing wells and building more Water Harvesting tanks.

Over the years support for the project has grown both in Uyogo, the regional government office of Urambo and in Kenilworth. The charity has established communication with Uyogo via a Liaison Officer, who consults with the villagers and then relays what they say the main needs of the village community are. Several Liaison Officers have visited Kenilworth over the years to meet with KUFL’s Committee face to face, get to know each other and understand how the project can best work, building upon mutual trust.

In line with our focus on education, in Autumn 2023 KUFL is helping to complete the building of another primary school classroom in a sub-village of Uyogo Ward called Igembensabo.   Igembensabo villagers make the bricks and build the classroom as far as they can and then KUFL supports with some funds for plastering and buying a corrugated iron roof, mosquito netting for the windows (no glass required) , etc to make the classroom fully usable.

Kenilworth Uyogo Friendship Link had a successful stall at the Christmas Market in December 2023 demonstrating through models and photographs the various building and water projects underway.

The following photograph and video show the water pumping testing.  Before starting on the project to supply water to Uyogo village by solar panel power, it was necessary to know that the borehole used to provide water for Uyogo villagers, schools and dispensary is good quality, and the borehole had enough capacity.