Educate and Empower Girls and Women of Acholi

RIVER FUND HIV/AIDS FAMILY SUPPORT WOMEN ASSOCIATION is a Community Based organization established in 2006. Its office is situated at Christ the King parish, Kitgum Town Council, Kitgum district, Uganda. It has a total membership of 30 women who have volunteered to help sensitize and restore hope to the traumatized community (orphans, child headed families, people affected with HIV/Aids) as well as improve the nutrition of malnourished children.

Key focus areas of intervention include; Training Women Living With Aids (PLWAs) on long term Survival skills, Care of malnourished children through providing food stuff, Counseling of married couples on coping with the Aids pandemic situation in their families, Home visits of PLWA, Educating mothers on providing proper and balanced nutrition using locally available resources and Initiating livelihood and economic strengthening schemes for PLWA that do not demand too much energy. 

This report is on activities carried out in the month of April to May 2014.

ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT.

1. Support to children in school.

25 HIV+ school going children were supported in fees, school uniforms and scholastic materials this second school term. The support is made for the entire school calendar. The children will be visited and talked to find out other challenges that might be affecting their performance in class. This will inform other intervention for supporting the children to perform better.

1. Support to 25 extremely poor households with HIV+ Children with food items like sugar, posho, beans, and other items to boost their food stock in the house. This activity is one of the key aims of the Association which is to care for malnourished children through providing food stuff. Each household received 10 kgs of posho, 05kg of sugar and beans, and 2litres cooking oil. Many more children shall be identified for support to combat malnutrition and other opportunistic diseases which may result from malnutrition.

Lessons learnt.

Many children are incapacitated to access basic education due to poverty and health related problems. Most of them are orphaned and being taken care of by grandparents who cannot also provide for themselves due to economic hardships.

Provision of scholastic materials is essential but many caregivers prefer to receive support in fees other than books or uniforms saying they are not able to earn anything to pay fees which is considered too high for their level of income.

Households of elderly persons are more prone to diseases like malnutrition for the children due to their lack of energy to engage in activities that require much energy to earn income for food provision. This leaves the family to depend on a meal a day which is not adequate for proper growth for the children.

Plan for coming quarters.

1. Conduct data collection on malnutrition and early childhood development. This will inform the project intervention strategies for effective service delivery to the beneficiaries. Instead of focusing solely on children, the program shall consider the entire family or household as the programming unit. Though services offered by implementing agencies varied, the focus here shall generally covered health and nutrition; education, vocational skills training, and life skills; household economic strengthening and psychosocial support;
2. Train caregivers on cereal production and nutritional food provision. This is aimed at strengthening the capacity of families to protect and care for orphans and vulnerable children.
3. Identify OVC (girls) for support in secondary education. Data collection done in three schools in the district indicates that many secondary school going girls are forced out of school due to challenges that they cannot overcome. Many cannot afford fees as most of them are orphaned to HIV/AIDs and the LRA conflict.