PROJECT AREA
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
INTODUCTION
The
education of the world’s children is high on the global agenda. In the context
of education for all (EFA), all children should receive free, good quality
education. The reality is that millions of the world’s children are too poor to
benefit from the declaration, unless there are special interventions that
target their development. Unfortunately, such children do not form a special
social category in poverty eradication intervention programmes. Thus, their
inclusion in the achievement of EFA appears to be a hit-or-miss phenomenon.
Recognizing the central role of poverty eradication in wider global gendas and
acknowledging the need to reach out to the poorest children with the objective
to break the poverty cycle for them, BFI Org embarked on a programme of
education and poverty eradication.
The
Project aims at solving the problems hidden by the fact that orphans and
vulnerable children are invisible; yet by the very nature of their situation,
they are included among those that are classified as disadvantaged and poor in
Uganda. Children are subsumed within the poverty categories most often referred
to such as households, communities, people – which means that there is a high
tendency to focus on adult-related poverty while child problems are ignored, partly
because children have little power and influence within a group that contains
adults.
Findings reflect that
children in abject problems can be recognized by rather elementary (as opposed
to sophisticated) criteria. Top on the list is absence of basic necessities
such as shelter, food, clothing and water. Equally important is the ‘human
condition’ in terms of physical health and parental care and protection.
Schooling is high on the list as a critical criterion in determining who is
extremely or modestly a vulnerable and disadvantaged child.
While
there seems to be national consensus among donors, the public sector and civil
society that the government has made commendable progress in implementing PEAP
(Poverty Eradication Action Plan) as flexibly as possible, it’s evolving
nature, due to the participatory and consultative reviews it undergoes
regularly, does not address many of the development challenges Disadvantaged
children face today. It would take lobbying and advocacy interventions to
ensure that the needs and demands of children in abject poverty are met.
The UNESCO 2003 study on Children in Abject Poverty
in Uganda revealed that:
Ill
health and inadequate health services remain critical challenges for children
in abject poverty. This is aggravated by the living conditions of children in
almost all the districts studied.
On a
positive note, over three quarters of those who fell sick sought some kind of
modern treatment; very few resorted to traditional healers.
School-related
costs have been the major obstacle for children in abject poverty to access
education.
Project profile location:
BRIGHTFUTURE INITIATIVE Organization is a Non-Governmental
organization registered with government of Uganda (IDIG/201/13) under the Non-Governmental Organizations Registration
statute, 1989. The organization was formed mainly to focus on Rural Community
people development in various aspects for self-empowerment ESPECILLY for
Children, Women and elderly. The organization is based in Magogo Local Council
One, Nawaninji Sub-County, Kigulu County
in Iganga District.
GOAL
Bright future initiative org has a very strong goal of
improving the quality of life of the vulnerable children and orphans through
providing education, giving care, love and support. Additionally, it promotes
empowerment of rural Community people in various areas affecting humanity.
MISSION
To translate the
lines of marginalized people especially the ones who have lost the dear ones
and have no one to take care of them.
GUIDING PHILOSOPHY
The philosophy and experience of Bright future initiative
org is based on the reality that every human being is a unique individual and
that we all have a right to good health and basic needs and should access means
to a comfortable life in one way or another.
CORE VALUES ARE:
Equality for all: God made all people
equal; our organization is committed to a development process that promotes
equality.
Rights and dignity for all: Bright
future initiative org believes in and strives to uphold the rights and dignity
of all people especially in the rural communities.
Stewardship: Bright future initiative
org believes in God to protect the dignity of everybody to exploit the Earthy
goods in accordance with God’s Law and individual order.
Institutional partnership in
development: Bright future initiative org welcomes and respects on going
International initiatives and national policies to take care and give support
to vulnerable children and disadvantaged people fight poverty, ignorance and
diseases such as Malaria, Immunisable diseases and HIV/AIDS. Our activities will be unison and
collaboration with other stakeholders.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Due to increasing deaths of people as
a result of HIV/AIDS so many children have been left as orphans with no body to
take care of them and giving them support. Most of the children are left with
their poor grandparents and some are left homeless hence ending up on streets.
Only
11% of urban births and 3.4% of rural births are registered, meaning that the
majority of children are denied this basic right. Approximately 96% of the
poor, the majority of whom are women, live in rural areas (UBOS, 2000, 2003). A
UNICEF project document (2003) on orphans and vulnerable children indicates
that approximately 2.1 million children in Uganda are orphaned and, of these,
80% come from poor families.
The
child-headed household trend in Uganda is such that rural areas have 79.9%, of
which 49.6% are male-headed and 30.3% are female-headed. The trend in urban
areas is that of the 20% child-headed households, 10.5% are male-headed whereas
9.6% are female-headed (Uganda Bureau of Statistics-UBOS, 2000).
Children’s
vulnerability to poverty, adversity and HIV/AIDS is largely contextual but also
indicative of the widespread situation in protecting them.
Uganda
currently has over 2 million orphaned children, the majority of whom were
orphaned by HIV/AIDS (Uganda Poverty Status Report, 2003). The number is
expected to rise in the next decade and this will increase the risk of children
turning to the streets, and becoming beggars and thieves.
The
rise in the proportion of child-headed households and child laborers means a
rise in percentages of the illiterate, early pregnancies, and related consequences
such as infant and maternal mortality rates, increased incidence of those who
are infected by sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV/AIDS, and drug
abuse. While the Government will continue to increase spending on reproductive
health services, it will also be losing valuable human resources. The cycle of
child poverty will thus be passed on to next generation and become chronic. It
is evident that the HIV/AIDS scourge is increasingly taking its toll on those
who should otherwise be enjoying childhood in Uganda.
A
large proportion of deprived children have acquired psychopathological behavior,
increasingly becoming involved in crime, drug abuse and violence. Many, too,
are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and yet enter the labor market at very young ages,
all of which seriously affects their growth and well-being. Children under this
category experience extreme poverty, which is compounded household, community
and national poverty.
The
2001/2002 participatory poverty assessment by the Uganda Participatory Poverty
Assessment
Process (UPPAP), and Save the Children UK studies on child poverty confirmed
that children are a vulnerable category of the population, and that policy and
institutional frameworks are taking longer to cope with changing sources of crisis
and adversity. A link between large/polygamous families with poverty, and the
high level of household population (six to eight members), increases the
difficulty of providing adequate coverage and quality of public services such
as education, health and housing for families, especially for children. Poor
health reduces the productive capacity of households and limits children’s
access to their basic needs.
The
magnitude and complexity of the problem of child poverty in Uganda is large and
growing, and cannot be ignored when designing national development and poverty
reduction strategies. Unfortunately, children and young people continue to be
marginalized in spite of interventions, especially where assumptions are made
that interventions that address adult and household needs are also good for all
children, including boys and girls of school-going and non-school-going ages.
This partly explains why child poverty is underrepresented in most studies on
poverty in Uganda (Save the Children UK, 2003)
JUSTIFICATION:
The
rationale for carrying out this study on children in abject poverty in Uganda
is based on the problems resulting from the fact that children in poverty are
invisible, yet they constitute a disproportionately large section of the (poor)
population. Children are subsumed within the most referred to poverty
categories: households, communities and people; yet among these they always
occupy a position of least power and influence (Save the Children Fund UK,
2003), and focus tends to concentrate on adult-related poverty. Children are
vulnerable to shocks and adversities and, consequently, are hardest hit by
poverty. Given that childhood is the most crucial developmental period in an
individual’s lifetime, any damage at this stage can lead to a perpetuation of the
cycles of poverty, resulting in intergenerational and/or chronic poverty.
Interventions such as universal primary education, and maternal and childcare
mitigate against the monumental odds.
PROGRAMME DISCRIPTION:
This programme is already running in Magogo,Bukaye,Bukonko
and Bunyiiro Village but the children which number up to 200 are living in
homes of their guardians and other people who endeavored to give them care. The
focus of Bright future initiative org now is to acquire land and establish a rehabilitation
center for these children, a home as well as a primary school. In this
programme, Bright future initiative org – also seeks to provide logistics to
these children.
The reason as to why we are advocating
a rehabilitation center is: the problems we are facing when these children are
in other people’s homes. For example the logistics given to them are sometimes
taken away from them, they are denied to go to school and when they fall sick
medication is not adequate.
PROGRAMME PURPOSE: The purpose of this programme is to
reduce the suffering of the orphans and vulnerable children, build their
capacity through giving them love, care, education and simple activities to do
so that they become productive in the society.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:
- To
improve the quality of life of the orphans and vulnerable children by
establishing a permanent home, school and health care centre for them.
- To
train care givers in care giving skills to enable these children get adequate
care, love and support
- To
provide adequate education to these children to make them good citizens
and have a better future through good
education right from a tender age
- To
create awareness to the community and the outside world the need to protect and
support the vulnerable children and the orphans as well as protecting their
rights.
Comparisons of studies and child perspectives
Child
poverty can be analyzed both subjectively and objectively. Studies such as the
Save the Children UK 2003 study have analyzed child poverty indicators on the basis
of how they relate with institutional frameworks through which monitoring would
be effected.
Characteristics of child
poverty in key domains
Personal,
emotional and spiritual well-being
• Lack of
parental guidance, care and love
• Not having
the means to get what one wants
• Inability
to solve daily problems, both as a result of lack of money as well as lack of
initiative and innovation that results from financial poverty (‘poverty of the
mind’)
• Being
dependent on others
• Lack of
religious grounding
•
Discrimination and deprivation
• Alcohol
abuse by parents.
