FOR 15 3000 FAMILIES TO GET OUT POVERTY

In Uganda, pregnant mothers always find themselves at a fix as regards taking care of themselves and the pregnancy especially when they are from poor families and this can lead to adverse effects such as inability to attend antenatal care, inability to feed on a balanced diet and generally inability to be ready for delivery. This has effects on the unborn child where medical and health related conditions such as congenital abnormalities, miscarriages, still births and low birth weight stem.

Kigezi Healthcare foundation recently in one of its community visits empowered pregnant women economically by providing them with rabbits so that they can keep them. Rabbits have a relatively short maturation period of averagely 100 days and quickly multiply due to a 30 day gestation. This makes them a relatively sustainable source of income given that they are fed on grass and vegetables which grow nearly everywhere I the communities. With the market of rabbit meat on a rise, they can sell their rabbits so as to earn some money to facilitate a number of issues at home that are important in pregnancy such as  balanced diet, traveling to ante natal care points and purchasing items required for the delivery such as babby clothes, cotton and gauze pads.

The women were taken through the different methods of caring and looking after the rabbits highlighting the types of food provided, at which intervals and the kind of housing that maximizes the profits. This was a stitch in time as the women admitted to finding it hard to raise money for the items needed in preparation for delivery such as ultra sound scan, cotton paddings and also traveling to antenatal care points. They heralded this initiative as a Daniel come to judgement and they even made it a target to keep even more rabbits so that they raise more money to keep them in better economical levels even after pregnancy.

We continue to thank our supporters and call upon everyone out vieing for a better world to join us in the fight against poverty

17 teenage girls receive rabbits supported by parents and other community members.The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all aspects of life in Uganda, resulting in school closures, loss of jobs, and disruptions in access to health and social services. But no group felt the effects of the pandemic more than teenage girls. Sex abusers, forced marriages and early marriages descended on teenage girls, rising rate of pregnancies to unprecedented levels in the country. Media reports of many young girls conceiving became especially common during the lockdown period and this in the end made worse by culture and unsupportive parents made them single mothers as the men that made them pregnant abandoned them and or denied the pregnancy. Single motherhood comes with the burden of raising the child and making sure that the child gets the basic care together with the mother. The teenage mothers were trained and rabbit breeding cages constructed by the community members

Unfortunately, these girls cant find decent jobs or work as they are limited by the level of education and societies disdain. To support their struggle to better families, KIHEFO has provided rabbits to these mothers in their local groupings as rabbit breeding has been the most effective form of income generation for poor families since they provide nutritious protein to the family. They have a gestation period of 30 days and maturity of 100 days hence making multiplication easy which in the end increases the sales thus an increase in the household income. We thank our partners who have supported us in this project and we pray that more partners join us in the fight to get poor people out of poverty.