Support 225 adolescent mothers to thrive in Uganda

ADOLESCENT YOUNG MOTHERS PROJECT, KASESE.

During May training for most Adolescent Young Mothers Groups (AYMs) was about HIV/AIDS basic knowledge, ARVs and Condom use. The training was aided by TfD with drama, games and role plays that helped participants to be part of the training; making it participatory and lively. The games sparked lots of discussions that made the participants concentrate and they seemed to enjoy the training workshop. 

There were many questions raised by AYMs, related to discordance couples, the HIV window period and mostly challenging fears and misinformation about condoms use. These questions demonstrated how participants were picking up on the topics. Games like “Simon Says, Cat and Mouse and recap of Don’t Touch” were used during the trainings. By the month end we had reached 90 young mothers who were organised into groups at village level. 

During further training sessions participants demonstrated a high level of the knowledge of the previous topics during the recap session. This demonstrated confidence and courage amongst participants to come up and say something before other participants which was not the case before when we had first started training them. 

There is a good progress in the implementation of the project and beneficiary targets have been reached in terms of numbers (and by age range) across all areas of implementation. Also, the community participated in the project thanks to the level of mobilisation by the local authorities and the fact that Act4Africa is already an established organisation at grass roots level with an established structure of Community Mentors has aided the project’s success at this point. 

The project work done through training with young mothers seems to be impacting the lives of the beneficiaries. This is evident from feedback given by the young mothers about the change so far in their ways of social life because of the knowledge gained. Teenage pregnancy as a result of lack of condom use and early marriage was greatly attributed to ignorance and peer influence that is being addressed during training. 

One member gave her story saying:

“I am Janet and a young mother. My early pregnancy was as a result of ignorance about condoms. Each time I felt like talking about a using a condom I would think, I will be related to prostitution by my lover and the community as well. All my life I feared condoms because of such fears and also because of the oils on it, which I and many of my friends thought caused cancer. As a result I had never asked my boy friend for condom use and as the relationship went on I was impregnated. This forced my parents to stop paying for my school fees and I dropped out of school to stay at home, which ruined my life by then. Now with such training about condoms I am equipped with knowledge and I will never miss using it, even in marriage, if I want to space my children as long as I will be able to speak and convince my husband.”

Such case histories from participants are so encouraging and suggest success for the project aim and objectives. Participants are now courageous to use condoms and have self-esteem to talk about condoms and many other related social issues in relation to the knowledge acquired in front of others. 

The project now plans to start Voluntary HIV testing and counselling with supply of free condoms and educational leaflets to the participants and other community members to address the challenge of ignorance about HIV/AIDS and lack of proper counselling about social challenges faced by the communities. Next month, in June we shall encourage people to test for HIV as couples so that a family can know its status and receive counselling together as a couple. This will also help to reduce domestic violence related to discordant couples and also one couple supporting condom use and the other does not.

In conclusion, ACT4AFRICA KASESE is glad to have started implementation of the AYMs project with support from GLOBALGIVING UK, we hope this will create a profound change in the lives of beneficiaries both socially and economically at the end of the project and we are grateful as an organisation to see such change happening in communities that we work with. Many thanks for the support that is creating such big change.