Gloria and members of her family

Gloria is twenty years old. She cares for 5 of her siblings and 1 child of her own. The children are all under the age of 9 including twins aged 3. Gloria’s mother has re-married and no longer supports Gloria or her other, younger children. Gloria cares for them all.

A vulnerable situation

Gloria’s family, like many thousands of people in northern Uganda, was displaced by the Lord’s Resistance Army, which rampaged through villages abducting child “recruits”, killing those who could not fight, and sending hundreds of people at a time fleeing for camps for internally displaced people (IDP).

The camps have now been disbanded by government, and some larger NGOs have helped rebuild infrastructure and restore many displaced people to their former homes. However, many people remain in the “centres” at former IDP camps, either because they have no home to return to, or no means of supporting themselves. Helping those who remain in desperate and often traumatic situations is work at an intimate and necessarily personalised level, which small organisations like UHESWO Gulu are achieving by helping as many individuals as we can.

Before Gloria entered the UHESWO programme she was living in one very small room in an old hut with all the very young children. She recalls that during the rainy season, when heavy rains fall every day, the whole family would crowd into one corner of the hut to avoid leaks.

Gloria, her child and her young siblings were hungry and unable to support themselves, putting them at risk of being exploited and abused. They had no access to anti-malarial medication so frequent bouts of malaria in the children were potentially fatal.

Investing in training and overcoming trauma

Gloria was accepted into the UHESWO programme in our second year of operation, in January 2010, along with 14 more vulnerable young women in similar situations. All the women received training in business: managing money, trading for profit, and saving for the future (a skill which is not always easy to come by in Uganda as a whole, let alone in the former IDP camps).

All the beneficiaries also received counselling, both collectively and on a one-to-one basis. Rape and other abuses were common in the IDP camps. May of our beneficiaries grew up as children never knowing anything but the camp, sometimes with no living family around them. Counselling enables people to understand and overcome some deep traumas and look to the future.

For her vocational skills training, Gloria was given a choice between tailoring (buying material and making clothes) or growing and trading food (“produce”). Most of our beneficiaries choose tailoring, and then enter our 10 month training programme learning skills to make clothes for themselves and to sell as a commodity.

Gloria instead chose trading and produce because this training programme is more flexible: important when you are caring for six children with no one to lean on. Gloria and the other “produce” traders were given 300,000 Ugandan shillings (less than 80 Euro)  in small portions to begin buying seeds for root vegetables (sweet potato, yams, casava), green vegetables (cabbage, egg plant, “boo”, “malakwang”).

Progress on a new life

Gloria began by buying and selling with a first instalment of 100,000 shillings startup money, travelling from deep fields in small villages to trading centres in the old war camps to build a profit. She and her family would consume some of the food but retain a profit on produce re-sold to others.

With enough profit coming in, she was able to buy some land. It cost 500,000 shillings but now she had a new-found confidence to do something that would have been terrifying previously: she negotiated to pay back the 500,000 shillings for the land over the course of a year. The income from trade alone would not have been enough to cover this, but now she could begin to grow her own food. Today she grows mainly green vegetables, beans and peas. Again, she can now eat her own produce and sell some to buy a more varied diet and to begin to save.

Gloria and two of the children in her care, in the hut she built for herself after training, counselling and startup funding from UHEWSO.

With further investment from UHESWO, Gloria was able to build a hut for herself and her family. In the year that Gloria went through the programme (2009), UHESWO’s budget covered 10 new hut builds. The beneficiaries approached local builders themselves (this is cheaper than if NGOs make the approach themselves) and her new home was built for around 280,000 shillings.

Today Gloria has room for her children in two huts. Gloria farms on her own land and trades to support the family. She owns land, and her own huts, and her children are healthier and happier.

Solidarity

Gloria also gave part of her land to her friend so that their huts could be built next to each other.

“The girls go through the programming together. They may not know each other to start with but they turn out to be a family. You have to look out for each other you have to help each other. That’s a message we have to teach – it’s not always obvious when people are competing for food and money. If you are united, we tell them, you are going to prosper faster. Gloria’s kind heart is a great example of that.” – Agnes Ojera, UHESWO

Since then, Gloria has also saved to build another hut of her own, so that they have a separate space for cooking and storage.

Gloria saved for this second building herself. However, it was crucial for her farming – as well as for the health and dignity of the whole family – that Gloria and her children were given a simple home to start with, right there on her new land. In 2009 and 2010 we were able to finish the annual programme by providing most of the beneficiaries with new huts. In 2011 this is not possible. Our work is now registered and recognised but this means our tax bill has increased. Along with record inflation afflicting Uganda and a need to invest in transport for our counsellor and training staff (a new motorbike) this means our budget falls short and we cannot build the new huts for beneficiaries this year.

Help us home our beneficiaries this year

A woman like Gloria, trying to run a small farm garden, will have to travel from their single small room with her many children every morning because we cannot afford to invest in building a new hut.

Depending on the area, the cost of a new hut build is around 280,000 to 320,000 shillings. That’s around 80 Euros to buy the labour and materials to construct a new hut. They are simple, time-tested structures with reed roofs, firm floors made of hardened waste with walls of dried mud. A new home takes a family out of a dead-end, giving them a chance to work their new land and build their future.

You can help us complete this year’s work by giving one beneficiary a new home for just 80 Euros.

If you can afford to build a home for a vulnerable women so she can make the best of the training and support we’ve already provided this year, please see our Support Us page.