BOSCO Uganda Relief Project

Complete News and Media Updates - War ravaged Northern Uganda

The Rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged northern Uganda is three times higher than in iraq, according to a report by 50 international and local agencies released yesterday.

The report by the Civil Society Organizations for Peace in Northern Uganda says there are 146 violent deaths a week in northern Uganda or 0.17 violent deaths per 10,000 people per day. ''Rates of violent death are three times higher that those reported in Iraq following the Allied Invasion in 2003," said the report, entitled ''Counting the Cost: Twenty Years of War in Northern Uganda". The incidence of violent deaths in lraq was 0.052 per 10,000 people per day.

''Crude mortality rates are more than three times higher than those recorded in Darfur in October 2005,'' the new report added. But the government yesterday criticized the report for misrepresenting the situation in the north.

Kathy Relleen, a policy adviser to Oxfam, one of the organizations behind the report, said the Ugandan government, the rebel army and the international community ''must fully acknowledge the true scale and horror of the situation in northern Uganda The report attacked UPDF'S Operation Iron Fist inside southern Sudan, which it said, ''instead of crushing the rebels," had ''stirred up a hornets' nest driving most of the LRA back into northern Uganda where it began a brutal campaign".

The report puts the cost of the war in northern Uganda at $1.7b over the past two decades. It said this is equivalent to the United States' total aid to Uganda between 1994 and 2002.

It said 25,000 children have been abducted in the region and that 95 per cent of the people in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader are living in absolute poverty.
''Twenty years of brutal violence is a scar on the world's conscience," Relleen said in a press release. ''The government of Uganda must act resolutely and without delay, both to guarantee the effective protection of civilians and to work with all sides to secure a just and lasting peace."
She said the international community had done little to respond to the conflict ''and to support and encourage the government of Uganda to actually make the protection of civilians its first priority".

The report calls upon the international community, including the United Nations Security Council ''to give the conflict the attention it deserves".

Contact us at: info@bosco-uganda.org

Images of Despair and Hope:

Starvation comes with War

Dry thatched roofs burn easily

camp

Trouble is always near by, even in better times

camp

Archbishop Odama has worked tirelessly, making several trips to the USA

Odama

Nutrition, Idleness, Despair all take their toll

Bloated Children

Gus & Okumo plan for deployment: perhaps in March!

Gus and Okumo

Gulu Center & Personnel Training Center. BOSCO command center will sit here.

CTC at Gulu hub

Images of Hope: Phase I Deployed

1: Archbishop Odama places the 1st VoIP call from the Gulu Hub site to the Pabbo IDP camp - 70km distant.

2: John Nsambo, placing the 1st email through the Inveneo system to his boss, the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni.

3: The Abandoned UTV Tower in Lacor: Our main relay station and the source of a great deal of high altitude work. (Click to see full size)

4: Kerry Vickers & Ted Pethick mounting Solar panels in custom carriages built for Inveneo by their local partner, Norbert Okec

5: The kids at Pabbo - an IDP camp of 70, 000 +, were eager to interact with the "Musungu"...and to see their pictures!

6: The Pabbo kids greet us with open arms! (Click to see full size)

7: Pabbo Schoolhouse - new home of PC and phone

8: The Pabbo Water Tower - Receives directional signal 70km from UTV Tower in Lacor - relay's signal south to Jengerri and then to Pagok

9: The BOSCO & Inveneo teams

10: The Catechetical Training Center with relay point on roof, towards the Guest House

Local volunteer Simon training new techs - Pagok

CTC Relay from Modem to Guest House

Local Admin Philipp Glaser knows his stuff!

CTC Relay from Modem to Guest House

Special Note of Thanks:

We at BOSCO would like to thank Mark Richards of VoX for his partial donation of service to our cause. Anyone considering a Business class VoIP solution please consider our recommendation, and contact Vox at:

Vox Communications Corp.

Northern Uganda Testimonials & Latest news out of Uganda!

News Flash - BOSCO Phase I Successfully Deployed - Details available below. Please scroll down to page bottom, thank you!

Latest Press , Diagrams & Schematics

Press Articles, Testimonials, and the BOSCO network schematic here:

April 17 2007 - Click Here for Full Press release

San Francisco, California. April 17, 2007 – Inveneo Inc, a non-profit social enterprise, has partnered with the BOSCO (Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach) Uganda Relief Project to provide access to computers, the Internet and VoIP telephony for Northern Uganda’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The BOSCO Uganda Relief Fund partnered with Inveneo to provide and deploy Inveneo’s solar-powered Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) System to give Caritas and Catholic Charities, and the isolated IDP-camp communities they serve, a vital link to the outside world. This phase of the project serves nearly 100,000 people and provides a communications network of computers and telephones connected via long-range Wi-Fi for multiple locations...

designed and installed (as) a high-speed local-area network using long-range WiFi networking devices, ultra low-power computers and VoIP telephony for Caritas/Catholic Charities. The Inveneo network is powered via solar panels which power battery arrays. Internet connectivity is carried from the city of Gulu via the Inveneo WiFi network to the IDP camps up to 70 Kilometers away. The system is specifically designed to be operable on 12 volts with a range of power options, and is resistant to heat, humidity and dust – so that it can operate in environments where computing has traditionally not been found. It has been designed for ease of use for both users and administrators who are new to technology.

BOSCO saw the potential for communications to transform daily activities in the camps, where few phones and no power exist today. They were searching for a cost- and power-effective solution when they found Inveneo. This phase of the project will connect eight Archdiocese offices, two clinics and 17 schools. The network will be used for all types of communications needs, including logistics, emergency notification, school-teacher training, consultations between clinics and doctors, communicating with American and European donors, and getting out critical information on human-rights violations...

“Many of Uganda’s adults, and especially its children, have suffered greatly due to a war that has lasted more than 20 years. We believe that providing affordable, sustainable communication technologies to the organizations which serve them, like those provided by Inveneo, can change the lives of these people in dramatic ways – simple ways that so many of us take for granted,” said Ted Pethick, Navitor Systems of Indiana, the Technical Director and Designer of the BOSCO Project.

“Inveneo is dedicated to helping to improve people’s lives through ICT solutions that help to connect them to world around them. ICT relieves their isolation and opens opportunities,” said Mark Summer, CEO of Inveneo. “It can provide the ability for people to call the clinic when there’s been an accident, it can enable camp teachers to access better teaching tools on the Internet, and it can simply provide much greater ability to perform day-to-day logistics for the Catholic organizations.”

The project has also gotten the attention of the Ugandan government. “We intend to make every effort to support this project, which gives a voice to our people that had been cut off from the outside world,” said John Alituma Nsamba, the State Minister for Information and Communication Technology in Uganda.

Download this press release as an Adobe PDF document.

Contact Us

info@bosco-uganda.org

Archbishop Odama places the 1st VoIP call from the Gulu Hub site to the Pabbo IDP camp - 70km distant - successfully. Mark Summer, CEO of Inveneo, is at left. Members of the Ugandan parliament are also pictured. (Click to see full size)

Ugandan State ICT Minister, John Nsambo, placing the 1st email through the Inveneo system to his boss, the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni. (Click to see full size)

BOSCO in action - Bringing Ugandan's Together

Uganda Rising: The 20 Year & The Terrorist Rebel Army

Child Soldiers in Uganda: You can get one out!

A Trailer from "Invisible Children"

Government Reaction

How our System will change peoples lives. An Inveneo Testimonial

The Brutal 20 Year War: Beware - Graphic Sequences & Images

Latest Updates: BOSCO Phase I Complete - Deployment in place as of April 15 2007. These Images will eventually be links, when clicked taking you to the full scale downloadable images - Check back soon! - Webmaster

BOSCO Phase I: in this phase the first Seven IDP locations have received several Client-Server based computers, VoIP Telephones, Solar Power, Camcorders and educational opportunities with support staff. Please consider donating whatever you can, so that we may provide for these people, before resumption of hostilities ...webmaster

Above, left, Gus A. Zuehlke is now in Uganda preparing for deployment and negotiating last minute details

To Left, you will see the building which will house the BOSCO Server; CISCO Router & Hub; VSAT equipment; Solar Array and batteries, and all all other mission critical control hardware, software and personnel

Images of and Hope: Phase I Deployed - Pictures shown in Column Left

Picture 1: Odama, Nsambu & Summer of Inveneo celebrate the execution of the VoIP network by placing a call 70km north to Pabbo - for free!

Picture 2: State ICT Minister Nsambu Emailing Ugandan president Museveni the great news - communication has reached the IDP camps via Internet and Voice and Image

Picture 3: The Uganda Telecom Tower in Lacor. 40 Meters high, you can see 3 of 4 long range radio antennas - enough to broadcast our signal up to 100km distant. Custom built carriages were constructed to mount these antennas, which you can see protruding from the tower near its apex.

Picture 4: Inside the Tower Engine House at the foot of the Tower, Solar Panels like these pictured were mounted, supplying energy to Deep Cycle 12V Batteries, with Charge controllers, and extended cabling up the tower using Power over Ethernet to supply the WAP devices attached to the Radios.

Picture 5: Inside the Pabbo Installation we took some time to meet the Children!

Picture 6: The beautiful Pabbo Kids - so full of enthusiasm and hope.

Picture 7: A Pabbo Schoolhouse, which now has more than just a blackboard and some textbooks from the 1950's: A Broadband connected PC, a VoIP phone, digital Camcorders, and Solar power!

Picture 8: The Pabbo Water tower, which is reached via the Lacor UTV Tower, 70km distant, and then services the entire Pabbo IDP camp, as well as serving as relay station for the broadcast to Jengerri and Pagok, to the South. We encountered great difficulty in obtaining the rights to use this invaluable line-of-sight location.

Picture 9: The BOSCO and Inveneo Teams - from left; James, our local maintenance and construction partner, Mark Summer of Inveneo, Kerry Vickers and Ted Pethick of BOSCO, Gus Zuehlke of BOSCO, and Jamie Brunner of Inveneo, who is training the local team to maintain and service the system, and training new users the basics of computing. Not pictured: Norbert Okec, Local system administrator.

Below: The UTV Tower again (click on either image to see full page) in close up, and in perspective with the Generator house which houses the Solar installation and Security. A security fence was constructed along the perimeter of this site. In the Tower-right picture, Kerry Vickers is atop, beginning installation of the Radio Antenna Carriages.

2 Towers

Picture 10: The ADSL line is here, at the Catechetical Training Center, at the Archdiocese of Gulu. From here, you see the Relay antenna on the roof, which forwards the signal to the Guest house, which in turn communicates with the UTV tower, which in turn broadcasts to all BOSCO installations in Gulu province to date - Gulu, Lacor Pabbo, Jengerri, Pagok, Alero, Coope, and Unyama. Please view our Design Schematic here: The BOSCO Network Diagram - A Schematic Drawing of the BOSCO Solution