Team Uganda

Team Uganda was The University of Manchester’s first flagship international opportunity, providing meaningful volunteering opportunities overseas for undergraduate students.

The project was a partnership project between the University and S.A.L.V.E. International (Support and Love Via Education) , a charity based in Manchester and working in Uganda. S.A.L.V.E. works with children on the streets in Jinja, using the power of education to provide opportunities for them to leave their difficult pasts behind them and move off the streets towards a brighter future.

This project ran between 2015 and 2019, and has delivered environmental, IT, community research and social enterprise projects and holiday camps. The projects have been a great success and continue to make a real impact enriching the work of S.A.L.V.E. Over the five years over 70 students took part, contributing over 10,000 hours of volunteering.  Each year they were joined by Ugandan volunteers, working in mixed teams. 

You can read the Team Uganda Impact Report here:

• Part 1: The projects and activities that took place;
• Part 2: The impact on the student volunteers and S.A.L.V.E.'s work.

Key findings include:

• A clear impact on the skills development and employability of the student volunteers. Many have talked about the project in job aplications and for some it has strongly influenced their career;
• Key skills developed through the project include teamwork, cultural awarness, communication, research skills, leadership, confidence and resilience;
• It has also influenced students' sense of social responsibility, increasing their awareness of global issues and the difference their actions can make;
• The project has had both an immediate and long lasting impact for S.A.L.V.E. and their beneficiaries;
• In particular through the establishment of a social enterprise, the mapping of communities, and supporting increased numbers of children to be resettled as a result of the holiday camps.

We are extremely grateful to the donors of the project and the efforts of all the students who took part.

Whilst Team Uganda has finished, you can still volunteer with S.A.L.V.E. International who are one of our Trusted Partners. Find out more.

To hear about the project from the student's perspective please visit the Team Uganda Blog.