Friends of the African International Christian Ministry

In the beginning

In 1980 Enoch Kayeeye, a Ugandan priest studying at Oxford’s Wycliffe Hall, met Ugandan-born Trevor Williams, then Trinity College Chaplain. After Enoch had advised Trevor on planting onions in his allotment, the seed was sown of a student expedition. That bore fruit in 1983 with Oxford and Bristol University groups taking books, medical supplies and ideas for building water tanks with cement and chicken wire.

This was the start of the realisation of the vision Enoch had had since his teenage conversion to Christianity, to direct his life towards meeting the spiritual and material needs of the people in his own parish in Kabale and the surrounding rural areas of Kigezi and  the South West.

On Enoch’s return home in 1983 he founded African International Christian Ministry. In 1987 friends in England and Scotland started a support group, which in 1992 became a registered charity Friends of AICM (Number 1011451.) Its role remains to raise and channel financial support for field work, to underwrite staff salaries, to encourage and to advise when needed. Friends of AICM seek to enable, not to manage.

In the present

Motivated by Jesus’ words in John 10.10 – ‘I have come that they may have life to the full’, AICM ministers to scattered communities across SW Uganda, to the Rwandan border. The work includes secondary education, vocational training, community development, promoting health and advancing the rights of the marginalised - such as the Batwa (pygmy) race, expelled from their rainforest homes without government provision. AICM has bought land and is teaching the Batwa how to build homes, cultivate ground and integrate into local communities. Two primary schools have been built to encourage them to educate their children. AICM also works with 5000 women, often AIDS widows, and orphans, in remote hill villages around Kabale. Dedicated extension workers travel huge distances on motor-bikes or cycles to develop such projects.

At its Kabale HQ, AICM runs a strategic Vocational Training College (VTC) offering life-changing opportunities to many from disadvantaged backgrounds. Recently licensed by the Ugandan National Council for Higher Education, it has 500 students seeking a range of secretarial, computing, technical and practical skills. Most importantly, students come into contact with the Christian faith applied to daily life.

Friends of AICM seek

• supporters to pray for AICM and recruit others.

• regular funding to ensure salaries of key staff. These few dedicated Christian men and women are essential to AICM’s continued operation.
 
• UK sponsors to give orphans opportunities for secondary and vocational education, and to support Batwa primary education.

• donations for specific projects such as to provide rain water harvesting, seven motor bikes for field workers, and land and buildings to match growing student numbers.

In God's future, we hope to

1. Recruit, train and retain more high quality staff, raising Vocational Training College courses to consistent high standards for a premier establishment. 
2. Improve workshop, classroom, library, sports and boarding facilities at the Vocational Training College.
3. Fund an adult literacy scheme for Batwa communities.
4. Encourage more Batwa children into primary education.
5. Help more people hear the life changing news of the Gospel.
6. Find people from UK ready to visit (paying their own way) and to advise on achieving these developments.

Gordon Ogilvie, Chair, Friends of AICM

For further information, please visit www.aicm.org.uk for details of newsletter, trustees and how to offer support.

The Archbishop of York has been Patron of Friends of the African International Christian Ministry since 2006.