Kikondo, UG – Committed to community, employee learns, applies, and teaches new skills – 1 Jul 2017

Nakato Rosemary (Rose) is continuously learning, applying, and teaching new skills through her work with Wamukisa. She hopes to contribute to the continuous improvement of life for her family and her community.

Nakato Rosemary (Rose) works at Wamukisa as a farm assistant and community relations lead. She started working for Wamukisa in January 2015 when she was selected to attend organic gardening training with Better Lives in Tanzania. She never dreamed she would get an opportunity to travel abroad and learn new skills relevant to her life. Rose is a single mother of two and before the training she had never traveled outside of the trading center in Kikondo village.

Rose returned to Kikondo determined to make sure her community would benefit from her good fortune. Her role as community relations lead at Wamukisa means she is constantly sharing what she learns with others. She conducts mentor visits with families every week and shares the knowledge she learned at her organic gardening training.

Wamukisa also started a trial organic piggery project based on best-practices Better Lives has compiled from other piggery projects across the world. Rose is in charge of this project and in addition to learning how to care for pigs she has also learned how to maintain and analyze a project ledger. This has helped her continuously improve the piggeries at both Wamukisa and her own home. Rose now earns an average of 360,000 UGS (US $109) every 6 months fattening piglets at home. She is looking forward to sharing what she has learned with local families once Wamukisa has proven the sustainability of pig-fattening as a small business.

In 2017 Rose was selected to lead the Kikondo Youth Group. The group brings young people together to collaborate on income generating projects like farming and craft-making. She credits skills she learned at Wamukisa with giving her the confidence to take on this role. Steady income from Wamukisa also enabled Rose to sign her kids up for private school at Hill Primary School in Kikondo.

Rose is now saving to buy a plot of land With recent and upcoming local developments including electricity, water connections, improved agricultural markets and paved roads, Rose believes Kikondo will be seen as a model village by the end of 2018.. She has set a SMART goal of purchasing land in Kikondo by 2021.

Rose’s biggest challenge is that she can’t communicate fully in English. She wants to start taking English lessons so that she can access information on the internet easier and continue sharing knowledge with her neighbors.

Her dream is to have a happy family with beautiful agri-business projects.