KAMPALA, Uganda, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Some 200 Ugandan women who earn $1.20 per day breaking rocks into gravel in Kampala have donated $900 to the U.S. victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Rose Busingye, a 36-year-old Ugandan nurse, works with the women, many of whom have AIDS and work at a strip mine outside Kampala.


She said the women's hearts had been touched last year when they donated some of their earnings to victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. She told the New Orleans Times Picayune she didn't have the heart to ask for another effort, so she asked only that the women pray for Katrina's victims.

But at least 200 women began donating their mining wages, and money from selling bananas, necklaces and small chairs.

The women turned over their money to AVSI, a Catholic Italian aid organization in Kampala, which will forward it to an AVSI office in the United States.