Destination Point Kenya

UCRC is a community based organisation in Ugunja Division of Siaya District. It was started in 1992 to respond to community’s information needs after a realisation that the next and nearest information centre/library is in Kisumu some 72 Kms away. UCRC is a membership based organisation with membership standing at eighty six as at present. This is drawn from Women’s groups, youth groups, welfare organisations and church groups among others.UCRC works mainly in three programme areas, that is:
1. Information
2. Food security
3. Peace and Development

In the area of Peace and Development, UCRC collaborates with other partners like the Chemi Chemi ya Ukweli, Amani Peoples Theatre, People for Peace in Africa Citizens Coalition for Consttutional Change (4C’s) and the Peace-NET of the NGO Council (UCRC being the Nyanza regional focal point) to organise seminars and workshops touching on the issues of leadership and conflict management for its network membership to help cultivate the peace culture and good leadership values in the local community of Western Kenya.

UCRC again works closely with such Organisations like the International Potato Centre (CIP) to promote improved potato varieties after cassava, a major root crop in Siaya has been totally wiped out by the cassava mosaic viral disease, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) for provision of clean planting materials , International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT) for the promotion of Pigeon peas, Pearl Millet, Sorghum among others taking into account that Siaya is Semi-Arid and the soils are poor and acidic, and other institutions to foster food security issues in the community.

On Information, UCRC is the Western region focal point of a project “Participatory communication for democracy and sustainable development” of the Environment Liaison Centre International, funded by the World View International Foundation based in Sri-Lanka. This is a project which aims to equip community members with the ideals and skills of using electronic equipments like the Video and Audios to help them (community) document information about themselves and disseminate / share with both the local and a wider audience on the same.

Because majority of the rural populace are poor readers (thus the difficulty in proper understanding of and deissemination of infomation materials contained in the Resource Centre Library), UCRC embarks on other infomation sharing forums like Cultural days, farmers field days and festivals.

In September, UCRC organised a one day cultural festival on which several artistic works were displayed, some of which included handicrafts, cultural activities, songs and wrestling. Because this was only a one day event, it was not enough based on the recommendations. A second festival was organised in June for three days and some of the recommendations received showed that the Youth felt left out thus the need to organise one, specifically for them. This culminated into the organisation of the “Youth cultural festival”  whose report is hereby given.