Community Mobilisation & Empowerment
ALFORD works hand in hand with local government councils in order to carry out community development functions with the community development workers; this plays a crucial role in interfacing between service deliverers and the community. Communities and households play a critical part in all the major services, for instance:
• Sending children to school
• Taking preventive health actions like improved hygiene and sanitation practices at households and community level
• Deciding when curative treatment must be sought
• Maintaining water supply sources
• Running LC1 courts and deciding when higher-level judicial intervention is needed
• Protecting children from violence, abuse, neglect and discrimination.
• Supporting home based care for people living with AIDS
Community Development Workers (CDWs) can help in promoting awareness of all these responsibilities at the community level. They are also directly involved in implementing the functional adult literacy and community rehabilitation programmes.
To strengthen the community mobilisation and empowerment component of the ALFORD will create self help groups(SHGs)which is a tool for social-economic development to improve family income and family welfare and community development through income generating projects(IGPs).through the conditional grant will be used to finance Community Development the grant is made up of a wage and non-wage component. The wage component is to cater for payment of salaries for the newly recruited sub-country CDWs while the non-wage component will be utilised to facilitate CDW at sub-country levels with the necessary logistical support and to a limited extent, to cater for the operational costs.
Social Protection for Vulnerable Groups
Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children
Orphans and other vulnerable children constitute a large and growing share of Uganda’s population largely as a result of HIV/AIDS and war related deaths of parents over the past decade or so. As of the year 2002/0332, 3.2 % of children aged less than 18 years had lost both parents while 8.4% and 2.2% had lost the father and mother respectively.
Orphan hood is partially responsible for the influx of children into urban centres; it is estimated that the country has 10,000 street children, mainly in 10 major municipalities and towns. In order to survive, street children become involved in both legal and illegal activities. Orphans are more likely than other children to have to undertake child labour, raising concerns about the conditions of work.
About 2 million Ugandan children have been orphaned by AIDS. There are a growing number of child-headed households as a result of AIDS-related orphanhood, which are particularly vulnerable. Indeed, orphans may be vulnerable to sexual abuse, thereby increasing their risk of contracting HIV.
Transition to adulthood is characterised by reproductive health concerns including HIV and other STDs, early marriages, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions and low contraceptive use. Major progress has been achieved in increasing access to educational programmes on sexuality, responsible parenthood and reproductive health services. The adolescent reproductive life programme is functioning over a wide area.
The legal framework for children’s rights in Uganda is embedded in the Children’s Statute, 1996. This consolidates the law relating to children and provides for their care, protection and maintenance; it covers parents’ responsibilities, local authority support (including provision for a family and children’s court) and the treatment of children charged with offences.
Implementation of the Act commenced on August 1st, 1997. However, district Councils have not fully embraced the Statute largely due to the limited number of Probation and Social Welfare Officers needed for the proper functioning of the family and children Courts. Most districts have not yet identified suitable facilities to be gazetted as Remand Homes and this has resulted in the continued incarceration of children in police cells and prisons with adults, contravening the Children’s statute. In view of the above, ALFORD aims to establish close collaboration with stakeholders under the Community Services Act, to better ensure that child offenders and offences receive due justice and appropriate rehabilitation respectively through the engagement of its Probation and Social Welfare Officers as well as Community Development Workers with LC 1 and Magistrate Grade II Courts.
Support to the Elderly
Recent work on social protection has identified the elderly as a potential target group for social protection. The elderly increasingly have to care for people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans, giving them an important role in economic growth. There are some specific public efforts in support of the elderly such as their representation on the Local Councils and promotion of awareness on issues of ageing through advocacy by CSOs, but there may be a need for a more comprehensive approach. Government will study the needs of this group.
Support to Persons with Disability
Uganda is estimated to have 2.46 million persons with disability. There has been increased awareness among the public on disability related issues over the past years which resulted, among others things, into the representation of PWDs in Parliament and in local councils giving them a voice to lobby for and access services. Parliament recently approved the National Disability Council to promote the rights of PWD.
The ALFORD is also implementing the Community Based Rehabilitation Programme for the Disabled. As of 2003, community based rehabilitation services (home care visits) were being offered to persons with disability in 13 districts and assistive devices had been accessed to over 200 PWDs. Vocational skills development centres for the PWDs are however operating, at only 10% capacity.
In line with Government’s commitment to ensure equitable poverty reduction and in view of the large proportion of PWDs, expansion of community based rehabilitation services (in addition to other mainstreaming interventions) emerges as an issue for priority attention requiring more public intervention.
Priority actions for vulnerable groups
ALFORD, stakeholders and Government will:
• Mobilise and strengthen community-based response for better care of orphans and other vulnerable children.
• Support empowerment of adolescents with reproductive health information and life skills
• Strengthen informal community-based support for older persons
• Support expansion of community-based rehabilitation for persons with disabilities.
Culture
Apart from being intrinsically valuable and an important dimension of identity, culture is also a form of capital which when well harnessed can help to move people out of income poverty. Traditional skills and indigenous materials are often accessible to poor and disadvantaged groups, and as such form a potentially viable avenue for poverty-reduction.
The past few years have witnessed a revival in the cultural industry with the private sector playing a leading role. The number of theatre companies and performing groups as well as individual artists has been on the rise. More importantly, given the behavioural influence that theatre has on population lifestyle, Government is keen to enhance its use as one of the channels for bringing about positive lifestyle change. The role and use of indigenous knowledge is also gaining recognition in sectors such as health where herbal medicines and traditional health care service providers have become partners in the delivery of the sector’s programmes. However, more work is required to build up the necessary capacity to ensure best practices in the use of indigenous skills and knowledge in the development process. Instances of malpractices by some traditional health practitioners for example, show the clear need for a regulatory framework for activities of cultural practitioners in the country.
In view of the above, formulation and implementation of national culture policy shall be expedited. This will go a long way, not only in protecting the rights to indigenous knowledge but also in addressing the existing gaps.
Priority actions for culture
• ALFORD will support the recording of traditional music and oral literature for its promotion.
Gender mainstreaming and empowerment of women
Gender and Basic Rights of the poor and vulnerable are crosscutting development concerns and as such they can best be addressed using a cross-sectoral approach. The realisation of gender equality and basic rights for all people therefore requires for all actors in the development process to address these concerns in their respective areas of mandate and capacities. There is compelling evidence to show that, due to systematic social-cultural practices of discrimination against women, there is an intrinsic tendency for most sectoral development programmes not to equitably reach or benefit women. There is therefore need to enhance deliberate efforts to institute policy mechanisms for purposes of influencing the national development process, to consciously target and benefit both women and men. In light of this, the ALFORD seeks to boost its effort to actively engage all sectors and local governments in mainstreaming these concerns in their plans, programmes and policies.This is largely due to inadequate capacity among sectors and local government planners and implementers (especially at sub-county level) to apply gender analysis skills to the policy making process; limited gender awareness among the communities; bureaucratic resistance to gender mainstreaming among decision makers; and weak support, supervision and monitoring among others.
On the demand side, the communities have inadequate information on their civic and human rights. As a result, the poor and vulnerable remain subject to abuse as exemplified by the continued instances of gender-based violence and child abuse among others. In addition, women are physically more vulnerable in terms of maternal health and HIV.
Priority actions for gender mainstreaming
In view of the above, the ALFORD plans to undertake the following interventions towards mainstreaming gender and rights of the poor and vulnerable in the national development process:
a)Will work towards implementing the Revised National Gender Policy
b) Implement a paralegal programme focusing on gender-based violence and basic rights of the poor and vulnerable in 10 districts.
c) Undertake capacity strengthening activities for enhancing gender and basic skills of decision-makers and planning/implementing officers to mainstream gender and rights in at least 3 priority sectors (Education, Health, Agriculture ) and in all sub-counties in half of the the covered districts;
d) Conduct monitoring missions focusing on assessment of progress in implementing gender and basic rights mainstreaming at community level.
e) Conduct gender and equity budgeting analyses for selected Groups.
f) Provide inputs to the review of domestic relations laws,
i) Provide civic training programs on capacity building of women and youth leaders in LCs, at district and sub-county levels, as well as PWD organisations Countrywide,
j) Develop a Gender Management System to review and audit government policies, plans and programmes for gender/equity responsiveness.