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Guiding light on special trip

Frank Wood
19/ 3/2008

A WOMAN who has been a guide to many local youngsters is off to Uganda next week on a special mission.

Jenny Kennedy, 56, has been invited by the Manchester-based charity Agapao International to spend a fortnight in Uganda teaching adults how to train others as mentors.

Because the trip is organised by a charity, Jenny of Lewis Drive, Darnhill, is paying her own £750 fare and will be unpaid while she is there.

In her normal daily life, Jenny is a youth worker employed by Rochdale Council but she is well-known in the town as a result of the fantastic amount of voluntary work she has done in the area, pounding the pavements as a street mentor to young people.

She is mentor co-ordinator for Youth Link and some of her work at Darnhill was funded by Guinness Trust housing association, which manages most of the estate’s housing stock.

Aside from doing her day job, she also sits on the Youth Offending Panel, organises activity weekends and has been described as "a constant support to young people in the area".

She said: "I am very excited about the Uganda trip. I will be taking with me a DVD recording of young people in Heywood being trained as peer mentors at locations such as Heywood Community High School and Back o’th’ Moss community centre.

"But my work in the Jinja area of Uganda will be with adults, training them so that they can teach others how to be mentors."

As well as Jenny’s mentoring work, the charity’s project, one of the two skills-sharing trips it organises each year, will help people in Uganda forge better links with the rest of the world.

They will be taking out nine personal computers and setting up an internet cafe.

Jenny leaves next Tuesday.