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 People 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.

Activities this quarter

1. Gender community education.

We acknowledge that to combat HIV/Aids, the social relations within the community is very important for the intervention to succeed. Being an organization with the value of justice and equal enjoyment of rights, we embarked on gender sensitization and education of the community through drama and discussion. The group moved to chapels which is an organized Catholic Church structure in the community. The group moved out to 4 chapels of Dure, Oryang Ojuma, Okidi and Akworo all in Amida Sub-county, Kitgum District and conducted 4 community ensitization/education. The exercise had an average attendance of 100 people per session, an equivalent of 400 people were reached.

2. Food Security Intervention.

At River Fund Kitgum, we integrate food security activities into our HIV/Aids work.HIV accounts for the low life expectancy in Uganda and reduced labour supply to the agricultural sector as reported by FAO in its state of food security in the world report. Northern Uganda faces a bigger problem of acute food insecurity being a post conflict region. In our intervention, 6 beneficiaries’ groups with an average number of 15 members per group which is an equivalent of 90people as direct beneficiaries and a trickle down benefit to 8 people per household reaching to720 indirect beneficiaries received beans seeds which are an effort to contribute to a reduction of the food insecurity at the household level.

All these were made possible with the continuous support from the Global Giving and the River Fund. It is our sincere appreciation for your endless love and service to the poor and those in need.

Our plan is to reach out to as many people in the community as possible but all is dependent on funding possibilities and as such he River Fund Kitgum is sending out proposals to other prospective funding agencies.