Our charity work in Angola

Handing over

We have worked tirelessly with a team of dedicated and loyal staff to improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people in Angola. However, in an effort to use our financial and human resources to best effect, we had to reduce the number of countries in which we operate. Reluctantly, we decided to end our work in Angola. We have handed over our programmes to local partners who will continue the work we started.

Charity and communities

The Plan Alto area, traditionally Angola’s “food basket”, was badly damaged during the civil war (1975-2002). As a result, Angola currently imports a large amount of its food. This causes problems, but we worked to ensure communities in the Plan Alto area were able to work, produce food and feed their families. In total, 9,540 poor and vulnerable families benefited from this livelihoods programme. 

Educating and co-ordinating

We reached 198 teachers through our distance learning programme, with basic and higher-level teacher training. At national policy level, we participated in a number of education forums – including Educators’ Day and national meetings of the Education for All network. We also organised a conference which set up a way for non-governmental organisations to work with the government.

Leadership

We focused on forming and strengthening community development committees. These provided leadership support to a pool of community volunteers, including farmers, HIV and AIDS activists and animal health workers.

Planting and seeds

Through our community-run seed banks, 3,035 families accessed at least 10kg of seeds each for 2008/09 planting season. This is a significant step for communities that experience up to nine months of hunger in a year and have depended on free food deliveries for more than three decades. 45 seed banks were built in 2008.

HIV and AIDS

We set up life skills and AIDS education programmes in 12 schools. Each of these programmes had approximately 50 student members. We also trained 114 community agents in 57 villages to raise awareness about HIV, AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and gender issues.

Video diary

The following video is an account of an evaluation trip to Angola undertaken by overseas department staff member Michael Hanley.