BLOG: People I Admire - Katelin Dutton of Newport

is currently working as a communications intern with the Bead for Life office in Kampala, Uganda. I haven’t met Katelin yet, but I’m greatly impressed with her dedication and work for a good cause.

Bead For Life helps impoverished Ugandan women improve their lives by making and selling handcrafted paper beads made from recycled paper. These beads are sold to crafters abroad (like my wife) or made into jewelry to sell. Katelin writes frequent e-mails back home about the colorful events that comprise her days in this small East African state that shares a border with Kenya. I’ve provided an excerpt from her latest e-mail below:

“Adjusting to the African way of life is by far more challenging than I had initially considered. A very well-educated man from Uganda expressed his frustrations with the backwardness of Uganda, recently moving back to Kampala after working in China for the Uganda Coffee Development Authority for five years. Things seem to be too corrupt in Uganda to make any progress to move forward. He said, 'If you want something in Uganda, you can go to the government and ask them how much they want for it.' Which perhaps explains why most systems in Uganda are unreliable. Yet he's optimistic that things could change here, as it did in China.

"One a positive note, my first video was posted on the BeadforLife Web site! Have a look here: http://www.beadforlife.org/beadparty.html. (it's the Anebo Betty video) This week BeadforLife was very happy with a new video I made about a young and very beautiful refugee from the Congo. Her and her husband moved here after her family was killed during the war. When they first moved to Uganda they were living in a cardboard structure they built in an alley. Since BeadforLife, they have moved into a one-room home and have been able to have a better quality of life. I went to her new place for the interview, in Old Kampala, an impoverished area, where men were collecting water from dirty drains and trash piles were around every corner. Yet, Chantal said, 'I am now smiling.'"

Watch for more from this intrepid young woman on Newport and Portsmouth Patch. Check out her Web site at www.katelindutton.com and view some of her blog posts on the Bead for Life Web site at http://www.beadforlife.org/blog/.