A letter on COVID-19
Dear friends, family and supporters, We hope that wherever you are reading this from, you are safe at home and in contact with loved ones. At the beginning of this month, we expected to be sending you a newsletter with the good news from March. Instead, we find ourselves alongside the rest of the world in unprecedented times as we look to fight Coronavirus. So, we wanted to write to you to explain how we’re dealing with Covid-19 and what we’re doing to help mitigate its impact in Uganda. Sadly on 21st March 2020, Uganda confirmed its first case of Coronavirus. Whilst the Ugandan Government did a very good job of prolonging the virus entering the country, it was inevitable that at some point, Covid-19 would hit us. Today the country went into full lockdown. What exactly the ‘Third Wave’ will mean, not only for Uganda, but for Africa as a whole, is still unknown. Uganda is someway behind Europe but we made the immediate decision to close down all of our plastic community collection sites and stop collecting plastic in order to protect our Eco Brixs staff and Masaka community. However, we are only too aware that there are hundreds of people within the community whose livelihoods and families rely solely on income from collecting plastic. We have therefore promised to retain the staff at our main site indefinitely, retain all staff at the community collection centres for the next 3 months and pay all customers for their existing stock for the next month. The fundamental reason why we set Eco Brixs up was to help the people of Masaka. We are therefore directing our remaining funds into supporting the community. With only one ventilator in the whole of Masaka, the need for support is greater than ever and we are now working together with Masaka hospital, the local council and community organisations to provide isolation and hygiene facilities. Obviously, there is a huge funding gap across all different types of organisations across the world, from charities to businesses, but if you would like to donate, you can do so via the donate button on the website. You can keep updated on our activity via our social channels and once again, thank you for your continued support. Andy & Gee
If you'd like to receive Eco Brixs news directly to your inbox each month, we send out a monthly newsletter sharing all the latest developments in our efforts to tackle's Uganda's plastic problem! Please subscribe via the box below! 🇺🇬