Ms. Anna Maria Namagembe hand-weaving mats to help support her 8 orphaned grandchildren. She has received two loans from the project to invest in income-generating activities.
Photo by Radhika Chalasani

Name of project
The Uweso Development Project

Location of Project
Uganda, districts of Kumi, Masaka, Mbarara, Soroti and Lira.

Responsible organization
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)/Belgian Survival Fund (BSF) Joint Programme

Description

The Ugandan Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) is an NGO created in 1986, with the aim of assisting approximately 1.03 million people under the age of 17 who became orphans during the mid-1970s civil war. Since then, many more children have become orphans mainly losing parents to AIDS. Approved by IFAD/BSF in 1994, the UWESO Development Project (UDP) was designed to help the NGO assist these young people and their foster parents/guardians.

The project’s major focus is on strengthening UWESO’s role to improve the quality of life of the needy orphans by empowering the local communities to meet their social, moral and economic needs in a sustainable manner. This is achieved by focusing on capacity-building within UWESO and initiating focused pilot activities to enable the organisation to respond to the increasing challenges of its decentralisation process, and to encourage a shift from centrally-run welfare assistance, targeted at individual orphans, to a whole-family approach.

The targeted area covers the districts of Kumi, Lira, Masaka, Mbarara, and Soroti, comprising 247 000 resource-poor orphans and orphan foster-families. Direct beneficiaries include 5,000 foster households comprising an estimated 20,000 orphans in the 5 districts.

One of the significant successes of the project has been the creation of the UWESO Savings and Credit Scheme (USCS). The Scheme facilitates the empowerment of foster families through skills development, providing access to rural financial services and accelerating increased social cohesion. The overall objective is to promote income and food-generation activities so that the foster families can cater for all the children under their care, including orphans (in some cases as many as 8-12) and their own offspring. The implementation of the USCS required a major training exercise, which contributed to the empowerment of foster families.

Informal vocational training is also undertaken to support rural orphans, with the objective of training individual orphans in remunerative activities by local private artisans, traders and street merchants, reimbursed by UWESO. Training is informal, highly focused, practical and promotes local materials, markets and tastes.

In order to ensure effective implementation of the project, it was necessary to provide institutional support for UWESO’s National Secretariat and district branches, particularly in terms of technical assistance (for consultancies and training) and provision for new staff to strengthen the capacity of the offices.

Results achieved

The UWESO Development Project has helped the organization to shift its approach from relief to development, primarily by testing on a pilot basis, and then successfully establishing the UWESO Savings and Credit Scheme.

Major impacts were achieved in the area of staff training, particularly through the ''train the trainer'' approach. Headquarters staff skills in computers and finance management were improved, and the staff passed the training and adult learning messages on to their colleagues at branch level;

As a result of the UWESO development project, progress has been made in managerial and technical capacity;

UWESO is now viewed domestically as a leading NGO and knowledge centre on orphan issues;

Lessons Learned

• Project impact at the foster family level is considered positive, especially from the saving and credit services. The USCS is still at a start-up stage and requires further development in order to expand outreach in a coordinated and cost-effective way;

• The high quality of training provided, together with the frequency of training, was an effective response to UWESO’s approach to supporting economic activities at the household level (not by credit alone);

• The household surveys showed that foster families, often consisting of an elderly female as the only adult looking after seven minors, were in danger of falling behind the average levels of household income and asset growth. The survey also showed that UWESO member households, in similar conditions, were able to keep pace with the broader village economy through income generation and asset development.

IN THE WORDS OF OUR CLIENTS

The interviews were conducted in April 2000 during informal meetings with journalists.

• Benedete Nakayima, is a 70-year old widow. She is the grandmother of 35 orphans, 15 boys and 20 girls. Herself, she lost six daughters and five sons. Since she joined UWESO in 1996, she received four loans: UGSh100,000, UGSh150,000, UGSh200,000 and UGSh150,000. Now she trades in small fish, sugar and cooking oil in Mukene. Moreover, she has improved her banana plantation using mulching and manure. She also grows sweet potatoes, beans and maize and rears goats and pigs. With the earnings from the trading she is able to pay school fees, buy uniform and stationary, provide food, clothing and medical treatment to the orphans which was very difficult in the past. In particular, she bought two goats and two pigs from the benefits. She has started the construction of a bigger house to accommodate all her dependent orphans. She has acquired skills in business and is trained in childcare.

• Ibore Janet is a 40-year old widow with eight children and she has adopted four other orphans who lost their parents from AIDS. She joined the UWESO project in 1996. Since then, she has received four loans that allowed her to run a canteen in Atatur Trading center. This is her only source of income, which is just beginning to grow. Before starting her activity, food was a big problem with children having only a meal a day. The situation is not yet the best but at least they have two to three meals a day.

• Esther Asekenye is married, she has three daughters and at the same time she looks after three orphans. She joined UWESO in 1996. She received four loans that gave her the opportunity to run a retail shop. The business has been a success, and they have to provide for the children and hope to do even better, as the children grow. From the profits, she bought a vehicle.

• Joachim Ddumba, 22 years old, lost both his parents from AIDS and now he is the head of a family with three brothers. He joined UWESO in 1994 and received two loans, the first one amounting to UGSh150,000. following a training course under the IFAD/BSF programme; he now runs a radio mechanic and repair shop. With his earnings, he is able to look after his three brothers and also to send them to school.

• Rovina Ndagire is a 65-year old widow, with eleven children, four boys and seven girls between one and sixteen years old. Herself, she lost four sons to AIDS. She joined UWESO in 1994, and since then she received three loans, the last one amounting to UGSh75,000. With the loan, she sells tobacco, raises pigs and rabbits and brews banana juice. Now she is able to pay school fees for school going orphans, buy stationary and uniforms and provide the orphans with food, medicines and clothing.

• Norah Teruma is a widow with 12 orphans, seven boys and five girls between one and sixteen years old. She lost her own child to AIDS. She joined UWESO in 1995 and received three loans, the last one amounting to UGSh300,000. She deals with animal husbandry, rearing of pigs, cattle, rabbits and poultry. She has a small retail business in Nnyendo, a suburb of Masaka.

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