The bulldozers arrived after midnight, sirens wailing. Awakened from their slumbers, slum dwellers in the suburbs of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, rushed for cover as excavators dug through wood, brick and corrugated iron.
It was a typical eviction in the Banda slum, home to an informal settlement of around 1.3 million people. The residents lost everything: clothes, furniture, roofs over their heads.
Among them were around a hundred direct and indirect beneficiaries of the vocational training project run by our local partner, UYDEL (Uganda Youth Development Link). They found themselves without housing overnight, and their regular participation in training programs was severely compromised.
We therefore decided to provide emergency aid to cover the most important expenses (food, clothing, bedding and basic necessities) while waiting to be rehoused in the communities or with family members, while continuing to follow the UYDEL training (economic independence).
The UYDEL project started in 2021 and aims at the professional integration of over 1,000 young people living below the poverty line in the slums of Kampala, Uganda.
