By Mutyaba James Claude | Executive Director
Empowerment For the Poor-Uganda has continued to build the capacity of poor women and girls to respond to HIV infection, gender based violence (GBV) and sexual reproductive health challenges in rural communities of Mityana and Ibanda district of Uganda through our community health education program. In the communities where we live, women carry the face of new HIV infection due to their social economic vulnerability factors. Poor women cannot decide on the number of children they should have and most times they succumb to sexual exploitation and harassment which expose them to HIV infection. Teenage pregnancy is on increase and girls marrying at an early age.
During this period, our focus has been on promoting behavioral change campaigns targeting young people in schools between the ages of 15 to 24 and out of school youth from 17-35 years. Under the tagline, “Positive Life Choices, My Future!”, the campaign was aimed at creating a supportive and enabling environment for young people to empower them with accurate knowledge and skills to understand their sexuality. During our campaign activities, we used edutainment to creatively share messages to help young people easily comprehend the Sexual Reproductive Health Rights message in an effort to change behavior.
We employed several strategies which among others included holding Youth Health Camps for one week long residential health camp targeting school going children between the ages of 10 to 24. We then engaged the youth in issues like menstrual hygiene, body changes, puberty, gender roles, and life skills development among others as well as empowering the youth with entrepreneurial skills
Related to the above, we held 3 Inter Generational Dialogue which brought together key stakeholders in the field of youth Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights issues to speak to the youth openly and discuss challenges facing the youth to make informed life choices. Due to constrained resources, we reached out to 218 youth all together. We are looking for supporters to help us scale our activities and establish entrepreneurship ventures that will increase opportunities for girls hence empowering them to avoid early pregnancies and marrying at an early age. We hope you will be part of this work and together make a lasting difference in the lives of vulnerable girls.
Thank you
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