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Some may remember that a few years back, the team here at Paizo, helped a small Ugandan group of roleplayers - Patrick, Joseph, Brian and others - who were running their own roleplaying campaigns and Pathfinder modules and taking part in a Kingmaker campaign that I ran for them. We will be forever indebted to Paizo for the encouragement they gave us and support in the form of core rulebooks and bestiaries, campaigns, modules, pawns and maps, none of which we could have afforded without them.
While the roleplaying has been instrumental in teaching so many things to these young people, especially problem-solving, through creativity, the need for reading has meant that roleplaying has been less accessible to many. Also, the modules written were targeted to a life experience that many of our children were unfamiliar with. To combat this we have been running Nyambe and other campaigns, with less diverse storylines, at least for the new members. For the long-term members, anything is fine now and we have been running Rise of the Runelords, where we are currently storming Fort Rannick! (Level 9)
What has been more successful has been boardgames and last year we ran the incredible first Uganda Village Boardgame Convention, where we taught children a wide range of boardgames from the simplest, to more complex games like Robo Rally and Legends of Andor. Not only this but last year, we had very few adults who could teach board games, so our teenagers did it all themselves - the planning, the graphics, the training, the organising, the budgeting and even some of the food provision.
This year we are doing a second convention - details at https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/uganda-village-board-game-convention - which is going to happen in May 2018. Last year we started up new boardgame clubs in nearby Gulu and the children there will be coming to this convention. However, we are also starting at least four new board game clubs in remote places in Northern Uganda and we will be inviting representaives from each of these clubs to attend the convention this year on a residential basis.
However, we are reliant on outside support for this event - food transport, security and even games - so we are looking for your help to achieve our next stretch goals, which will be to add four further clubs and upgrade our facilities to accommodate additional people on our site.
If you would like to contact me about the project my email is socentafrica@gmail.com - you can see more about the charitable work at http://cyen.org.uk/gamechangers
Thanks for reading this far!