What is CIFORD and how does All Saints Church offer support? 
CIFORD Uganda is a Community -led Initiative for Rural Development in Northern Uganda. It is an independent, community based, voluntary, non-profit making, non political and non
sectarian organization. Its aim is improving the socio-economic wellbeing of the vulnerable through economic and social interventions. Currently it operates in the Gulu, Nwoya and Amuru districts of Northern Uganda.
Its projects and programmes are child-focussed and concentrate on three main area of work: education and student sponsorship; livelihoods; sexual reproductive health and gender-based violence. Projects are designed to empower the communities to become self-sustaining with the ability to identify and solve their own challenges and needs. In addition to the main programmes CIFORD also implemented emergency responses to Covid in 2021; and to drought and the cost of living crisis in 2022.
How does All Saints Church support CIFORD’s work?
For the current three-year period (2021-2023) CIFORD is one of the agencies or charities that All Saints supports financially as part of its commitment to the wider sphere of Christian work in the world. We do this by dedicating 10% of our net annual income as a church to these charities. CIFORD is granted a proportion of that amount, receiving each year approximately £2000
In 2021 our grant supported the Emergency COVID response; and in 2022 it supported the emergency food aid relief. In 2023 our grant will be directed to a programme of climate change adaptation in the areas served.
As a church we are in regular contact with The Reverend John Ochola in Gulu, Uganda, who is the founding patron of the charity. We met him first when he visited All Saints Church in 2006 whilst taking a course on peace -building and development in the UK.
Photo: Relief food aid paid for by the grant from All Saints Wokingham being delivered to people in Nwoya, Northern Uganda
In 2022 Northern Uganda had been hit both by unexpected drought mid-year which prevented crops being planted and the global cost of living crisis following on from the war in Ukraine.
John Ochola wrote to All Saints as follows:
“The economic crisis characterized by high fuel prices and commodity prices has made lives of many so miserable as their present disposable incomes are so little or not there, to purchase the necessary basic needs.”
The food aid was directed primarily at widows, child-led families, orphans in care homes, and the retired without pensions.
