Resound Africa is a project that recycles used musical equipment in America to transform Africa by educating and providing entrepreneurial training for Ugandans. How it Works ......................................................................................................................................................................... Sound equipment and used musical instruments that are outdated or in need of repair are collected from churches and community groups in the US and transported in a 40 foot shipping container to the Connect Africa Hub in Kampala, Uganda. The Connect Africa Resound Academy takes students from Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps and teaches them to repair and compile the equipment into completed sound systems. The Fellowship of Born Again Churches of Uganda (FBACU), a network of 20,000 churches, then screens applicant churches and sells the completed sound systems to them. Each church pays back the FBACU’s microfinance branch, BANCS Microfinance, and in turn Connect Africa, over the following years. The Resound project addresses many of Africa’s crucial problems and needs. As northern Uganda emerges from more than 20 years of conflict and the IDP camps begin to disband, new jobs and educational training are becoming increasingly crucial. Connect Africa’s Resound Academy teaches students, through mentorship and hands on learning, the practical repair skills that will help them work in successful businesses in the future. Resound Africa also meets many churches’ dire need for sound equipment. The cost of sound equipment in Uganda is over twice the price of similar equipment in the US and cheap fakes populate most of the market. This leaves churches with over-priced, barely functioning sound equipment. Moreover, sound technicians are undertrained and often misuse and damage the equipment churches do have. Resound Africa makes sure churches receive good quality sound systems and hands on training to operate them correctly. How You Can Participate ......................................................................................................................................................................... In the US, the cost of repairing equipment often isn’t as economical as upgrading to newer state of the art sound equipment. The older microphone with a hum or cable with a short or soundboard with a broken knob is just stored in a backroom gathering dust and forgotten. We encourage you to put this unused equipment to use: invest it into the Resound Africa project with a small gift to cover the cost of shipping. Let us recycle this sound equipment to provide education, encourage financially responsible churches, and provide jobs to begin transforming Uganda. Crisis Response International, a Kansas City based aid agency, is partnering with Connect Africa to facilitate the collection and shipping of sound equipment for Resound Africa. Call us at (816) 603-3720 to arrange collection and transport of equipment to regional collection sites in the USA. Equipment Needed: ......................................................................................................................................................................... Sound boards, powered sound boards, speakers, amplifiers, cable snakes, XLR cables, ¼ inch cables, portable shipping cases, portable electronic keyboards, guitars, both electric and acoustic, base guitars, any strings, wind instruments, and other string instruments, drum sets and cymbals, tape cassette duplicating machines and tapes, laptop computers. At this time we are NOT taking upright/grand pianos, VCRs, desktop computers, monitors & printers.