The National Lake Rescue Institute’s community lifeboat service brings hope and support to East Africa’s marine based communities.

Since reading the first article about the National Lake Rescue Institute (NLRI) in the EYE, now almost three years ago, a great deal has happened.

If you hadn’t read about the NLRI or perhaps are new in Uganda, a quick recap. The NLRI was started in 2002 by a small group of local businessmen post the crash of a light aircraft in Lake Victoria in 2000. The objective, to develop a grass routes based waterborne search and rescue (SAR) service to serve the marine based communities of the African great lakes.

That said, the NLRI’s stated mission is “In service to save life on water and protect the marine environment”, which should read all life on water, human or animal and actively work to safeguard our shared marine resources for future generations. Since then the NLRI has been recognised as a collaborative development partner to the member states of the East African Community, namely Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and currently holds a seat at the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) Council.

An initial pledge made by a corporate enabled the organisation to build the first three NLRI containerised lifeboat stations and with that gesture came onboard as the NLRI’s first corporate development partner. Since this first pledge and with thanks to the foresight of said partner, other significant organisations have been drawn to support the NLRI’s development work. You may recall that in the first article we spoke of the four pillars on which the organisation is developing and expanding the service, namely education, communication, floatation and search and rescue (SAR). With a firm commitment to the belief that prevention is better (and more cost effective) than the cure, the NLRI’s containerised lifeboat stations have changed how the organisational message is perceived in the communities that the NLRI is working and has led to

additional stations being requested by communities in remote areas, which in turn has led to a great deal of in depth planning for a further systematic roll out of our containerised lifeboat station requirements in the region.

The first three stations are now complete, one at the NLRI head office and training school to facilitate crew training and to act as the primary Lake Victoria operational station, one at Jinja on the Nile, opened initially as a safety information centre for all river users in partnership with one of the operators and finally one at Kazinga Channel in Queen Elizabeth National Park in partnership with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA).

With the initial corporate sponsored and supported stations in position, the additional resources required to bring these stations up to an acceptable level of performance in terms of operations capability have been donated, i.e. boats and equipment. The NLRI is now using these resources to train our local full time paid crewmembers to a level of proficiency that will enable us to bring each station online and operating to a minimum international standard.

Also of interest is that after reviewing one of the NLRI lifeboat stations a certain corporate donor was suitably impressed with what had been achieved by this development partnership and so ordered and paid for a station and agreed to fund the development of the NLRI buoyancy aid manufacturing project, which commenced in August this year at the NLRI Station 3 at Kaiso on the shores of Lake Albert. The NLRI buoyancy aids have been tested locally and have also been sent to a number of lifeboat institutions around the world for international testing standards to be applied. In addition to this the buoyancy aids are now being used as a teaching aid at the World Maritime University in Sweden. Most importantly they are being sold to local fishermen who could never before hope to afford a life saving device

of their own and in so doing creating a sustainable community enterprise.

Interestingly this Lake Rescue, “Lifejackets for Africa, made in Uganda” enterprise has led to further unplanned developments, such as the necessity for a community cash deposit and withdrawal system, a basic health and sanitation education programme, all of which we are now working towards making a reality through the development of key strategic partnerships.

By way of evolving the NLRI lifeboat stations as community centres this organisation will be uniquely positioned at each of our station locations to become an agent for positive social change and sustainable development.

With that we would like to thank those of you who have supported the NATIONAL LAKE RESCUE INSTITUTE of East Africa to date and in advance thank those of you who post this article may consider that you too have a role to play in bringing hope to the marine based communities of the East African Great Lakes region.

Tim de Wet
Chief Executive Officer
National Lake Rescue Institute
Website: www.lake-rescue.org