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| Addendum The World Vision and the Government of Uganda Program of Assistance to Orphans of AIDS and War. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES 1. Increase productive capacities of families: The objective was to increase the productive capacity of the foster families through training, provision of agricultural inputs, and credit. The target number of families to be supported was 6,000-7,500. The rationale was that through this mechanism the needs of children including orphans would be addressed in a sustainable way and within a caring family environment. The years of turmoil had brought extension work in the area to a halt. Extension officers were unable to reach the farmers because of lack of transportation. At the same time poverty was afflicting many farmers such that many of them could hardly afford the cost of simple and yet vital inputs (hoes, spray pumps, seed, and tillage services). Overall, agricultural production in the program area had dropped as a result, leading to the prevalence of high malnutrition levels among children. In fact, during 1991-1993, the district of Rakai experienced famine. World Vision collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture at the district level to actively enhance foster family agricultural skills. This was accomplished by promoting and encouraging farmers to form groups of 20 to 40 individual farmers each. Group formation was in line with the MOA farmer skill enhancement strategy. Farmers in- groups were then trained in modern methods of farming, poultry keeping, passion fruit production, and vegetable growing. The training emphasized food production (crops and animals), increased income, improved nutrition, and environmental protection. Qualifying farmers were those that showed interest in the specific agricultural activity and agreed to form a group for more effective training. Farmers that qualified to receive the inputs were those that had taken in orphans, or who agreed to become model farmers so that their farm plots could be used for on-farm demonstration and training. Other farmers could obtain the training, if they were interested. But in order to get inputs, they had to pay some of the cost. Farmers who completed the training were then given critical inputs. The program supplied the initial stock of passion fruit grafts, maize, beans, and vegetable seed. Other inputs included 177 spray pumps, 20,944 hoes and other tools, pesticides and fertilizer. Handouts of farm inputs is not sustainable, but this was done at the beginning of the program, in part as a relief measure to help farmers recover from the effects of war and famine. A second component in the attempt to increase productive capacity was the introduction of credit to enable families to acquire critical inputs for both their agricultural and other activities. Some of this was group credit and involved groups of farmers applying for loans after they had taken the training and submitted a business plan. In some cases, the credit was in kind, where groups of farmers received a grinding mill, oil extractor or rice huller to operate as an income generating activity. Some groups opted for daily farming and used the project to receive exotic heifers as credit. A particularly significant aspect of the in-kind credit was a tractor hire service which foster families would use to increase acreage. 2. Enable orphaned children to stay in school: The objective was to assist 30,000-40,000 with tuition, clothing and scholastic materials needed for primary education. Orphan children constituted close to one third of total enrollment in a number of schools, and their inability to pay tuition and contributions into the school building fund was keeping many orphans out of school and had become a threat to the survival of the educational system itself. Fulfillment of the educational support objective was attained in three main ways. (1) The program undertook to pay school fees for up to 25,000 qualifying children to attend primary school. The education was to be carried out in the existing primary schools within the project area, most of which had on average as many as 100 orphans out of an enrollment of 324. (2) The program made contributions to the cost of scholastic materials, which included; exercise books, pencils, geometry sets, and in some cases some clothing and a blanket. (3) The program supported community efforts to renovate and construct 24 primary schools. This assistance took the form of contributing cement, roofing materials, doors and windows as well as providing transportation to move materials contributed by communities to the building site. In addition the program undertook to cover the wages of artisans contracted to undertake the construction. The standard school construction, which World Vision supported, was a 7-classroom block together with a headmaster’s office and a staff room, all built in permanent materials. In addition, up to four teachers’ houses were constructed as well as installing a water tank and building two latrine blocks. The selection of the students to be supported depended on four criteria: · Being orphaned. · Coming from an extremely needy family, where both heads were 70 years+ and with no meaningful income source. · Being a member of a child headed household. · Coming from a large family that had taken in orphans and with no meaningful source of income. · Except where children were already part of an existing WV program, registration into the education system was given to those that had registered with the program by their 12th birthday. · In the case of support in secondary school, the youth had to have passed the Primary School Leaving Examination, scoring at least grade C and above. (There were thousands of youths who had dropped out of school due to lack of tuition. The test criteria were applied in part as a prudent measure to select those to fill the limited slots that the program could fund). The criteria applied in selecting the schools to rehabilitate or build were as follows: · Recommendation by the district authorities in light of their district development plan. · Schools in very remote parts of the program areas and where there were very few options. · Schools that had a very large number of qualifying children (at least 80 and above). · Schools where, after mobilization, parents and the community at large demonstrated verifiable determination and willingness to contribute something (usually building sand, stones, bricks, labor to protect the assembled materials) for the rehabilitation of their school. 3. Enable older orphans to attain self-reliance skills: The objective was to establish and equip 18 simple rural vocational training centers at which some 4,500 youths would be provided with self-reliance skills. In the needs assessment exercise, several community and local government officials had expressed this issue as an urgent need. The existing centers at Kyotera and Kalisizo were much too limited in capacity to handle the large numbers of youths falling out of school. Informed officials contacted indicated that the area had great demand for skilled people in brick-making, brick-laying, tailoring, roofing homes, fishing, shoe repair, carpentry, and baking. The program devised a threefold approach to address this critical need. These included: (i) Encouraging existing technical schools to expand capacity and then take in youths sponsored by the program; (ii) Attaching vocational training to existing primary schools to which master craftsmen and women from the community would come and provide the training; (iii) Contracting with existing artisans in the community to take on a few students at a time as apprentices and then over a period of time teach them the skills of the trade. Remuneration for their effort would come in the form of free sets of tools (at the time tools were very difficult to get in Uganda and it was anticipated the program could get sets of tools through WV’s Gifts-In-Kind program. Vocational training centers were expected to realize some profit from the sale of items made. Such proceeds could go towards the cost of equipping each graduating youth with essential tools kit with which to get started. Selection of the youths to be trained depended on several criteria. In the case where training was attained through attaching a particular youth to a practicing artisan, the criteria used included: · Interest of the youth in the skill being offered. · Recommendation by the local counseling and development worker. · Distance from the youth’s home (in many instances youths were looking after other siblings and hence needed to reside close to home). · Marketability of the particular skill that a youth was requesting for. · Character of the trainer (whether he/ she was reliable, non-exploitative and had a genuine concern for the trainee). In the case where training was to be attained in a formal vocational training institute, the criteria for selection included: · Interest of the youth in the skill being offered. · Proof that the youth had passed the minimum academic requirements for entry into a technical school. · Ability of the youth or guardian to contribute 20-40% of the training costs. (Some youths did so through providing labor at the institutions). · Distance from the training institutions. · Marketability of the skill to be pursued. 4. Ensure counseling services to orphans and their foster families: The objective was to train a team of 100-120 community based parish development and counseling workers to provide counseling services to orphans and their foster families. The aftermath of AIDS had created a sense of fear and helplessness among orphans. Many were angry at the sense of being left behind. Even in the case of adults, knowledge was often scarce. Some suspected they would contract the disease by simply paying courtesy calls to homes of victims. Psychological support services were very thin in Uganda and up to the time of the AIDS epidemic, had never figured among the critical services provided through the Ministry of Health. The MOH had tried to initiate the ACP (AIDS Control Program) with part of its activities confined to patient care. NGOs had also tried some programs, the well known ones being those of TASO (The AIDS Support Organization). But, in both cases, attention was mostly to those dying from the disease, and not those being left behind. In discussions with government and school officials, concern was expressed about the need to design programs that would enable orphans and their foster families to get over the loss of their departed ones and participate effectively in community life and development. World Vision set out to address this need by encouraging communities to establish a community-based system of counseling along similar lines as a community-based health care system. The backbone of this was to be a team of 100-120 Parish Development and Counseling Workers (PDCW’s) who would be selected from within their respective parishes, trained and then posted to serve within their communities; approximately 10 for each sub-county over a three year period. These would be co-ordinated by project specialists in Social Work based in each of the sub-projects. The candidates would be carefully selected relying on consultations from local communities, schoolteachers and religious leaders. The aim was to ensure that those selected for training were people whom the public respected and often turned to for advice. An essential part of developing the counseling training program was a needs assessment carried out in the area. Through this exercise, it was found children needed re-assurance, guidance on how to make decisions (especially regarding continuation in school), responsible living, when to alert others that help was needed, and then basic health and hygiene. The needs assessment became the basis for drawing up the training program. Parents and guardians needed someone to talk to, exchange views on how best to cope, how to care for the terminally sick, how best to integrate new arrivals into the family. The training covered; basic listening skills, emotional support, stress management, alleviating fear, conflict resolution, as well as how to access overall survival needs of households when making home visits. Much of the counseling was group counseling provided to children alone, using the medium of the school; but some was family focused conducted within the home. Some involved awareness raising on the part of community leaders (women groups, youths groups, elders) so that they strengthen the ‘protective cover’ vital for the survival of vulnerable ones within a community. Some of the counseling was conducted in confidential settings, especially when it came to preparation or interpretation of wills, seeking advice as to when to go for blood testing, or seeking advice. In general individuals that community picked on as ideal for this type of work were those already respected in the community such as teachers, clergy, and elders. 5. Support and augment Ministry of Health (MOH) programs in the area: The general objective was to strengthen and extend the primary health care initiatives of the MOH through renovation of health facilities, and training of community-based health workers (CBHWs) and traditional birth attendants (TBAs) at the periphery. Primary Health Care was adopted by the Government of Uganda (GOU) several years before to minimize the burden of institutions and to improve the access of the population to basic health services such as immunization, endemic disease control and maternal health services. The program set out to accomplish this goal by undertaking to renovate 14 priority dispensaries in the area and training 480-600 Community-Based Health Workers and TBA’s, and equipping them with health kits and bicycles. The program also undertook to facilitate the formation of parish and village health committees, which in turn took responsibility for selecting candidates to be trained as CBHW and TBA’s. The primary function of the CBHW was to mobilize community support for the health activities in their community, thereby enabling communities to experience an improvement in health by the end of the project. The choice of health units to repair or build was based on the following: · Recommendation of the district authorities in light of the district development plan. · Health units in remote areas where the population had no other option. · Health units that were serving too large a population for the existing physical plant. · Health units where after community mobilization, local leadership and the beneficiary communities demonstrated determination and willingness to contribute what was within their means (sand, stones, bricks, protection of assembled materials) for the rehabilitation of their facility. |  |
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