Ugandan youth centre seeks funds for refugee music project

The academy is involved in community-based programmes such as sanitation and caring for abandoned children and adolescents while educating them in Ugandan culture and traditional arts.

The music project will consist of eight songs and a short film in which the artist will share their journey from the war-ravaged South Sudan and their experience living in Uganda.

A youth leader at the academy, Madina Nalwanga, said the project would run between July and August in partnership with Hip Hop Saves Lives, a New York-based Christian organisation that uses music to advocate for positive change in society.

“I call upon the world to shine a light on the world’s biggest refugee crisis,” she said. “Two-thousand refugees arrive every day with blisters on their feet fleeing the war zones. Children go to the noticeboard to find out whether their parents made it to Uganda, or whether they are dead or alive. This project will give them hope."

Statistics released in April by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) placed the number of refugees living in Uganda at 1.4 million, making the East African nation the host of the most refugees in Africa and third in the world.

Donations for the project will go towards studio recordings, the production of the documentary, paying the South Sudanese artist and a food and travel allowance for the Ugandan facilitators.

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