Educational Support to Orphans and other Disadvantaged Children.

The Education and Livelihood Support for Orphans and other Vulnerable Children Project will be implemented in Namasagali sub-county in Kamuli District in Uganda. The project is targeting 100 orphans and other vulnerable children, the households where the 100 students come from, 50 orphaned needy child mothers and the entire local community in Namasagali sub-county.

The overall goal of the project is to fight poverty in Namasagali sub -county in Kamuli District in Uganda through empowering orphans and other vulnerable children by offering them support to attain basic education, health care and life skills. Specifically the project will offer educational support to 100 identified orphans and other vulnerable children, improve the household incomes of the households where the identified orphans and other vulnerable children come from through provision of skills and inputs to enable them carry out vegetable growing as a business, support 50 teenage mothers by training them in tailoring in order to enable them to start their own businesses to earn a living and raise awareness among the local community members on the preventive measures of HIV AIDS so as to have a healthy and productive community.

The proposed project will to support the education of the identified OVCs by paying their school fees and providing them with scholaristic requirements and basic health needs. While selecting the 100 beneficiaries for education sponsorship 60% shall be girls for purposes of fostering affirmative action to the girl child. The project will further support the 100 households where the identified 100 OVCs come from to overcome poverty by equipping them by skilling them and afterwards provide them with inputs, tomatoe seeds, egg plants, sprayers such that they can grow vegetables like tomatoes, egg plants and cabbages which have a short gestation period and can easily be sold in trading centres and village markets such that they can take on the education of the OVCs under their care after the end of the project. Each family will also be given 500 trees to plant as a step towards environment conservation. Regular meetings shall be held with members of the beneficiary households and the rest of the community members to raise awareness of the dangers of HIV AIDS and also address other issues that keep local communities in poverty.

Every holiday meetings for all the supported children will be organized to create awareness on critical issues like how the HIV AIDS is spread and how it can be avoided. Children will also be inducted on issues of sexual reproductive health and other health issues essential for a child in school. Individual and group counseling sessions shall be organized for the sponsored children to gain psychosocial and spiritual support.

The project will also empower 50 teenage mothers with skills in tailoring. For purposes of ensuring that the community owns the project the trainers will be identified in the project area. The 50 identified child mothers will be divided in two groups each consisting of 25 members. The identified trainers will train the first batch of 25 child mothers who will afterwards train the second batch of 25. At the end of the training the beneficiaries shall be provided with sewing machines to enable them to start their own tailoring businesses so as to earn a living and support themselves, their families and the child/children under their care. 10 sewing machines shall be retained by the organization to facilitate the continuous training of other needy child mothers after the lapse of the project.

In all the awareness meetings held in the community, workshops and trainings the project will adhere to the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) put up by the Government of Uganda and the Ministry of Health to curb the spread of Covid 19 and Ebola. Venues for meetings, workshops and trainings shall have hand washing facilities and sanitizer and every participant shall be required to wear a face mask as required by the guidelines. Also, the project has a component of tree planting in order to fulfill the provisions of the Environment Act cap 153 which implores all Ugandans to contribute towards the maintenance of the environment.

Hope for the Rural Child Foundation is a best suited organization to implement this project. We are grassroot based and also have successfully implemented projects of a similar nature. Also given the fact that the leaders of the project steering Committee are professional teachers and born and live in the project area the project is in the right hands.

The project will benefit orphans and other vulnerable children and the community in many ways such as; preparing a generation of hopeful and productive young people in the community through sponsoring 100 OVCs to attain basic education, health care and life skills, improvement of the livelihood of 50 orphaned child mothers through skilling them in tailoring and afterwards support them with sewing machines to start their own tailoring business, change of the economic status quo of the families where the beneficiary OVCs come from through the provision of skills and inputs for vegetable growing as a business, mitigation of diseases due to continuous awareness on HIV AIDS thereby opening doors for the economic prosperity of the local community and the continuous training of OVCs in tailoring after the end of the project which will enable the community to get several youth entrepreneurs in the tailoring business.