Retain Orphan Girl Children in Schools in Uganda

Retention of orphan girl children project in Pallisa, Budaka and Kibuku districts – Eastern Uganda aims at empowering 80 widows in commercial vegetable growing to improve their family’s nutrition and income to pay school meals and scholastic materials for 1450 school going orphan girl children between 8-18years. The 80 widows have been empowered with modern knowledge and skills in vegetable growing and provided with vegetable seeds, pesticides and spray pumps as a sustainability means for the project. This is the May – July report and it is located on Globalgiving website and our website www.kagumudevelopment.org . The report clearly comprises of the progress of the project for the quarter ended March, 2017 with financial support from all stakeholders.

Current status of the project:
The following were done in the last quarter:

1. Procured onion seeds for 30 widows and they were given hands on farm training in onion growing.
2. Communally marketed onions, tomatoes, cabbages, egg plants and spinach harvested and distributed the proceeds to the widows.
3. Trained 25 community leaders on Child Protection practices to reduce on child abuse and child rights violations in the community.
4. Trained 50 widows on less energy intensive technologies to reduce pressure on trees.
5. Purchased 50 modern spray pumps for 50 widows.
6. Procured pesticides for 20 widows to spray and increase on harvest.

Challenges

1. The organization is faced with limited funding to support widows to undergo commercial vegetables production in order to maximize production and sustain the buyers demand
2. Some widows lack land and therefore, the organization hires land for them and they practice collective farming.
3. Rape and defilement of orphan girls which increases the risk of these girls being infected with HIV/AIDS hence early pregnancies therefore there is need to mainstream child protection activities in our project.

Recommendation
we submit our request to all development partners to extend their giving hand to the project to facilitate the implementation of this project in order to improve the social- economic empower of widow led households as this is the only viable project in terms of providing quick returns.