Seals reaches out to the unprivileged

The Seals Swim Club has established a partnership with the BOCA initiative to reach out to the underprivileged communities in Namuwongo.

According to Seals chairman Tefiro Serunjogi, this has been done not only as a Corporate Social Responsibility gesture but also in helping to impart life skills to the younger swimmers.

"We are grateful and humbled by the growth we have had for the past four years as a swimming club, where our main drive has been promoting swimming and improving competitive swimming to the bigger community of Uganda. But in the process we are working with young, formative, impressionable young people who we want to teach that life is much more to swimming," Serunjogi said.

"So we identified a community where they can start to learn that there is more to life than their small nuclear families. We want them to appreciate what they have but also learn that there are underprivileged who need help,"

"We hope to do this annually as we also try to build a connection between communities, families and the individuals we work with to see how we can support the different needy communities. So we brought them something small to make their Christmas a little more pleasant," Serunjogi stated.

Seals Club Chairman Tefiro Serunjogi (left), BOCA initiative's Allan Rugabo and some of the Seals swimmers hand over schoolastic materials to Marion Halayi a teacher of KUPONA Nursery School at Kiwuliriza Primary School. Photo by Michael Nsubuga

Following a pre-visit to the area the swimmers and their families were able to donate items that included plastics, sugar soap and clothes to 12 of the 20 families that they visited.

Children of KUPONA All Healing Nursery School and their school who received an assortment of scholastic materials, at Kiwuliriza Primary School were the other beneficiaries.

BOCA Initiative Team leader Allan Rugabo said his organization was a community undertaking helping the underprivileged urban population.

"We are doing a lot of work in slum areas and our entry points are life in terms of employment, skilling, reproductive health and education and we operate on the concept of crowd funding by reaching out to people, groups or companies that have strong corporate social responsibility aspects who we take programs to in various places," Rugabo stated.