A PENDLE vicar who visited Uganda and saw first hand the shocking poverty is set to launch a fundraising drive for a shanty town.

The Rev Richard Adams, vicar of St Anne's Church, Fence, has just returned from his African fact-finding mission.

The 57-year-old vicar, along with six of his congregation and three members of the Pendleside and Padiham Rotary Club, spent two weeks in Kampala.

During their stay in the Uganda capital they met Barnard Bakunda, the new chaplain of St Luke's Chapel.

Mr Adams said that over the past 15 years the church had helped Mr Bakunda's predecessor Canon Erasmus Bitarabeho build a worship centre, school room and cafe in the shanty town of Katanga.

On his visit he saw how the country, which he said has good natural farming resources, struggled with disease and high infant mortality.

And he said: "There are several areas in which the chaplaincy does work in a nearby shanty town, such as providing education for young children, improving the water supply and sewerage, and supporting the work with prostitutes.

"Many contract HIV and die young and they want to help by finding them other ways of earning a living.

"To pay for a teacher at a day school with materials and meals is about £30 a month. A little from here goes a long way there."

The party now plans to hold a number of events to raise funds.

St Anne's built up links with the Ugandan church when the congregation paid for Canon Bitarabeho to attend a conference in England in 1991.Canon Bitarabeho, 67, who was on murderous dictator Idi Amin's hit list, escaped death in the 1970s by not returning to the country from Canada where he was studying.

He has now retired but is raising funds to build a women's hostel at Mulago Hospital for university students.

Mr Adams added: "A lot of young women who come into town to go to university will be sexually vulnerable and get HIV.

"He is trying to get them somewhere safe to stay."