Retain Orphan Girl Children in Schools in Uganda

Summary

Retention of orphan girl children project in budaka distract Eastern Uganda aims at empowering 49 widows in commercial vegetable growing to improve their family’s income to pay school meals and scholastic materials for 1200 school going orphan girl children between 12-18years. The 49 widows are provided with modern knowledge and skills in vegetable growing, vegetable seeds, pesticides and spry pumps to start projects. This is the second report and it is located on global giving website. The report indicates the progress of the project for the last quarter with financial and moral support from the community.

Current status

The following was done in the last quarter:

1. Enrolled more three(3) widows to benefit from the project and they were given hands on farm training in vegetable growing
2. Supervised and monitored 13 widows projects to ensure that they follow the recommended vegetable agronomic practices
3. 13 widows harvested the first season crop yield
4. 8 out of 13 widows had successful harvest cabbage, eggplant, onion, sold to the existing local market and obtained UGX 180,000- UGX 230,000 cash
5. 32 girl children were supported with scholastic materials, completed term two studies successfully and reported to schools for term three studies.
6. 10 boys were also supported with scholastic materials and reported to schools for term three although; they are not the main target.

Challenges

1. The organization is faced with limited funding to support widows to undergo commercial production of vegetables in order to maximize production and sustain the buyers demand
2. Some widows lack land and therefore, the organization hire land for them and they practice collective production.
3. It is difficult to support only girl children because widow led households also contain boys who are also orphaned.

Recommendation

All development partners are requested to support the organization to fundraise resources to facilitate the implementation of this project in order to empower widow led households support orphan girl children in schools as this is the only way they could help orphans live sustainable livelihood and develop as meaningful citizen.

Testimony from the beneficiary

This is testimony from Dinah the wife of late Kafuko of Kaderuna Sub County in Budaka district and Kafuko died and left Dinah with four orphans. Dinah was found selling local bear in the trading centre. She was enrolled to benefit from this project because selling local beer is not a paying venture. She was among the first beneficiary of this project who was trained and provided with vegetable seeds and inputs to start vegetable growing project.

She is among the widows who had had good harvest and sold. She was able to pay all the school dues for her orphan girl children in school this third term. After paying school dues for her orphan girl children she left local brew business and she seriously engaged in vegetable growing project and has become a trainer of trainers. she promise to work hard ti ensure that all her children succeed in education and to recover the land her late husband had mortgaged out to secure funds for treatment.

This is a true story and explains how rural orphan widows suffer with orphans in Uganda. There is not system to support orphans in Uganda and as such orphan girls are forced for early marriages in Uganda despite their academic performance in class.

Links:

• www.google.com