A farming cooperative for widows and orphans in Uganda will get a tractor and other equipment to improve production.

Empower AIDS Widows - Save a Community

Updates from the Field:

Updates from the Field (or Progress Reports) on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.com by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

Keep Up-to-Date

Subscribe to "Updates from the Field" by E-Mail
Subscribe to "Updates from the Field" by RSS Feed

Index of Updates from the Field

October Site Visit

By Jaya Canterbury-Counts - Executive Director, The River Fund, November 07, 2008 01:29 PM

Last October, we visited the Rayland Rural Development Organization in Uganda, a community we are helping toward economic sustainability. Lynde Francis, from The Centre Zimbabwe, was inside the vocational training center teaching about 50 people “Long Term Survival Skills for HIV.” I went to see the new bakery -- powered by charcoal fire since there is no electricity in this village. That’s when I saw the starving young woman and her baby. The baby was tiny and listless. The mother was too malnourished to produce milk for the baby.

In rural villages, this image of mother and child is far too common. I greeted her and shook her hand in the Ugandan way. Our good friend Joseph, who runs the RARUDO project, and I agreed that we had to help this person who was in our path. Within 24 hours we had medicine, safe housing, a bed, blanket, food and supplies for the baby. We learned the woman had been starved and beaten by her husband. She had head wounds and a broken leg from being thrown. She had returned to her village, but had no family to help her. The women we trained will look after her – even though they told me they see many like her every day.

Attachments:

Goats

By Joseph Onyango - Director , August 07, 2008 05:00 PM

Dear Friends.

I send you greetings and appreciation from RARUDO members upon your donation.
On behalf of the members allow me say thank you for your generous support.
The members agreed to buy goats and distributed to the Orphans.
With the donation, we bought 32 cross-bred goats for milk and the children who received goats in this round will raise and pass the first offspring to their friends who did not get the first circle and it will continue until all the children receive the goat gift project.
The goat will provide milk to the orphans and vulnerable children thus improving child’s nutrition aspect.

Then the second offspring will be brought back to the organisation who will pass it to other members who were identified and reached during our last Long term HIVAIDS Survival Skills sensitisation and training, this will include disabled and other women groups.
We are also setting up a local bakery out of mud to bake buns to earn some income in addition to our agricultural activities which at least will help us supporting these orphans, PWLAs, and widows.
We sought so because we think it may bring us quick returns to arrest some of our situation of inadequate funding.
We shall be implementing other programmes one at a time as funds may dictate.

Thank you very much and may God bless you .
My heartfelt greetings to you all and my love to all friends.

Mr.Onyango Joseph
Executive Director

Attachments:

New goats!

RARUDO

By Jaya Canterbury-Counts - Executive Director, The River Fund, December 17, 2007 06:09 PM

The women of this impoverished area have now trained hundreds of other women in HIV long term surival skills ... inlcuding prevention, health and nutrition, the use of local indigenous foods and herbs, women's empowerment and given hope to so many. They have incorporated the disabled group into RARUDO. But they need so much more help to continue.
Attachments:

Vocational Training Center

By Jaya Canterbury-Counts - Project Sponsor, August 29, 2007 06:40 PM

The Rayland Rural Development Organization recently completed construction of a new vocational/training center in their small village. They did this with the help of donors and local government. RARUDO has also been able to purchase and install 10 sewing machines to begin training in tailoring in addition to their work in agriculture and organic farming.

Update

By Jaya Canterbury-Counts, M.Ed. - Executive Director, The River Fund, May 10, 2007 05:14 PM

In a region devastated by AIDS, these rural widows have joined their small plots of land to form an organic farming co-op. They need equipment and training to pull themselves and their children out of poverty. Presently, we have trained twenty widows in Long Term Survivor Skills in HIV/AIDS and they are in turn training others in their community. We have sent six AIDS widows for training in tailoring and they are now operating their own businesses and together the group has begun construction of a training center in their small village which will operate along with government aid to provide skill training for the local community. The group has also purchased bicycles to reach remote homesteads to train in HIV prevention and education.

Attachments: