3. Memorandum submitted by the Uganda
Women's Effort To Save Orphans UK Trust (UWESO)
The UWESO UK Trust was registered as a British
charity in 1993. We work closely with our sister organisation,
UWESO in Uganda, which was founded by the First Lady of Uganda
in 1986 to cope with alleviating the plight of orphaned children
and the families who had taken them in. Nowadays, the great majority
of such children, who are estimated to number nearly 2 million,
have been orphaned by the AIDS pandemic.
Most of them have been taken in by relatives,
such as a grandmother, aunt or elder sister. Some of the most
needy households are actually headed by a teenage orphan, who
finds it extremely difficult to cope. Virtually all are very poor
indeed.
Our projects are at grassroots level and help
such families to have a better life. Most centre on sustainable
farming and include related elements such as beekeeping. Using
fully qualified extension workers, we train participating families
in appropriate, organic methods of cultivation of both food and
cash crops, and in animal husbandry. We provide tools, wheelbarrows,
seeds, beehives, etc and also piglets or young goats, whose progeny
can be consumed by the family or sold. We have demonstrated that
agricultural yields can be improved fourfold. Families can enjoy
much better and more plentiful food and can also sell produce
to raise money for necessities such as school fees and decent
clothing. The orphans themselves learn important farming skills
and are less likely to drift to urban slums.
We also provide vocational training in skills
such as dressmaking, tailoring, carpentry and bricklaying. There
can be additional elements to projects, such as advocacy or public
health, depending on need. An important factor is that we work
with each group of beneficiaries for about three years, by which
time the whole project will have become self-sustaining. There
is a ripple effect from our projects, as nearby families see the
benefits that can be achieved and copy the methods we have introduced.
We have many testimonies by beneficiaries to
the benefits they receive from our projects.
We should like to advocate a broad approach
both to the requirements for grants and to their interpretation.
Narrow interpretations can cause an application for a very promising
project to be turned down on technical grounds. A broad approach
enables several beneficial strands to be combined. A greater synergy
can thereby be achieved, to the benefit of participating families.
Too prescriptive requirements make it more difficult to build
on demonstrated success.
We therefore hope that, in developing a new
AIDS/HIV strategy, the Department for International Development
will take this view into account. We think that the beneficial
results of projects such as ours speak for themselves and that
it is very important to enable successful organisations to build
on the strengths and core competences which they have developed
and proven.
Recent UWESO newsletters were also submitted
to the Committee. These have not been printed. Please see www.uwesouktrust.org.uk
for further information.
March 2004
| 
