By Thereza Nalumansi | Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Act4Africa
Greetings from Kathy’s Center, a center for rewriting stories, reviving dreams, restoring hope, and transforming lives for good. Young mothers whose lives were described as ending have been proven otherwise through their engagements with the team. Our hearts are filled with gratitude towards you for enabling us to deliver this life changing program.
On April 23, 50 young mothers were enrolled onto the Strong Mothers’ Program, a program aimed at improving their health, well-being, and empowering them to take charge of their lives. Similar to the previous cohorts, they are disgruntled, discouraged and miserable, with no education and no income to support their children. Furthermore, some confessed to having thoughts of wanting to end their lives.
Our message, “There’s still hope”, is delivered through training sessions tailor-made to address the varying challenges they go through. Through these, information on sexual and reproductive health is disseminated to increase demand for and access to quality sexual and reproductive health services. Topics to address their mental health (stress management, identifying emotions, active listening, breaking the cycle of abuse, and so on) are also part of these sessions.
AMs have one-on-one sessions with trained counselors to enable them to deal with some of the trauma and anxiety they experience on a day-to-day basis. We have so far achieved milestones of AMs who have overcome suicidal thoughts, as narrated below.
” Before coming for these sessions, I used to sleep with a knife under my bed, contemplating on the day I would finally kill myself and put an end to the unbearable pain. I thank Act4Africa for comforting me and engaging my mum. She was initially contributing to my sorrows through insults but has since stopped tormenting me, and rather supports me in coming for the sessions. I can say my life is much better now”, narrated Sausiya.
More to that, they have started their tailoring classes alongside their well-being sessions, and the excitement of gaining a skill has brought back hope and positivity in their lives. The once dull faces are now lit with smiles as these young mothers see that they too can do something with their lives.
This is all possible because of your support! We can’t thank you enough.
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