Sustainable and key support for Kibagare Community

Greetings from St Martins School and the Kibagare community. We hope that all is well with you and your loved ones.

Community Engagement and training.

We have continued with our community engagements since our last update. Through our community engagements and efforts 197 individuals were trained on Voluntary savings and loaning activities. This included 148 females and 49 males. Additionally three new groups were formed; Victory group with 10 members, Tumaini group with 13 members and an unnamed group with 13 members. As of end of May we had 23 active voluntary  savings and loaning groups with a total of 370 members.

Support for Young Mothers

A team from Crew has been actively supporting our young mothers who are out of school due to early pregnancies. this support includes a back to school program after delivery, income generating ideas and activities for those unable to return to school  and provision of sanitary pads, bar soap and panties, We have also trained 54 young women on soap making, which can be used for home use or as a potential business idea, additonally young mothers have been provided with pampers for their young children.

Household Support

We have provided support to vulnerable households in various ways. Ten households received porridge flour for infants, two households were provided with a month long food basket and guidance on breastfeeding and child birth recovery. Another two households have received a month long food basket.

Counseling and Psychological support

Our counselling sessions have continued. In April our counselling office provided couselling to 108 individuals through group facilitation. We also conducted group counselling sessions for 162 school going children in primary and secondary school. Additionally we offfered counseling to 28 parents and 31 teens on psychological and social challenges, children welfare and behavior , and emotional intelligence. During the school holiday, 19 high school students particpated in the holiday group sessions.

Health and Wellness

Ongoing trainings have been done focussing on HIV and Aids, stigma reduction, disclosure, and opportunistic infections. We also sensitized 42 people living with HIV and Aids on self awareness.

Economic and business Support

We have been actively involved in supporting small scale businesses with this community. Despite the challenging business envroment, we have trained and encouraged individuals to explore alternative income generating activities and businesses that are easy to scale. We visited and assessed 32 businesses. 15 are doing better due to being in operation for a long time. However 10 businesses were advised to change their approach, seven were affected by a road expansion and four closed due to the road expancsion.

Group Activities and learning programs

We facilitated group exchange learning programs for the community groups. this is to foster growth and encourage other groups to learn from each other and support each other. Wema group and Winners group excahnged ideas on boosting savings, maintaining a voluntatry saving and loaning group, and small scale business management. We also proposed a group business for the Male champions.

Household Visits.

Our team has continued to conduct household visits to assess the social and economic status of the community members. 31 households were visted , out of these, 19 were doing fairly well, nine were not doing very well and three were worse off. We also visited 17 businesses and advised those not doing well to seek other alternatives.

End period Poverty

We piloted a subsidized sale of sanitary pads for two weeks to help end period poverty. This was to run through the month of June and the data from this pilot would be used to come up with the next best steps.

This report is a highlight of the much that we have done and continued to do for the community here thanks to your continued support which enables us perform the above activities. We are grateful for the support as we continue in our mission of transforming the community we serve in Kibagare.

Thank you for being an integral part of our journey amd making a meaningful impact in the lives of the ecommunity here.

Best Regards,

Alfred M Aswan.

Links:

• School Website

Greetings from St Martins School and the Kibagare community,

It has been a busy few weeks since the year started and we have made good progress as far as our community initiatives go and we are looking forward to more engagements with the community.

Late last year and at the beginning of this year, there were two fires in the Kibagare slum which affected 39 households and had one serious injury and one fatality. The community team was able to assess the effect of the fire and the needs of the community. The 39 households did not salvage anything after the fire incident and they had to spend their days and nights in the cold. Some of the children missed out on school during the reopening of schools. 

Some of the families have been able to rebuild their homes through the help of the local leadership and also through the assessment there was an urgent need for food, household items, and school materials including uniforms for the affected children.

The school was able to provide food baskets to the 39 affected households and the 4 children were also given school uniforms and learning materials to continue their education. We also provided mattresses and blankets to the affected households. 

16 cooperatives started the year in the Voluntary and savings groups, and so far the groups have 323 members. additional groups were formed through community sensitization and additional 21 people were recruited in the cooperatives group.

The voluntary and savings loan groups have been trained in January and February on the importance and benefits of cooperative groups, and small income-generating activities to help boost savings and improve their livelihoods. 44 group leaders were also trained on their roles as leaders, adherence to the group constitution and guidelines, and how best to manage the different and difficult dynamics that affect cooperative groups.

Men are also encouraged to join in groups and support each other, to this end 21 men from the slum have been able to form and register a group with the social development office and are currently saving and loaning among themselves voluntarily. Most of them are engaging in small skilled businesses and through the cooperative they can save and loan each other with the intent of diversifying their businesses and also have a safety net where they can air their issues.

We are also continuing to offer counseling and therapy to individuals and group members from this community here due to the various challenges they have to deal with on a daily. Students from both our schools benefit from the sessions done individually and as groups with a focus on peer pressure, study skills, identity exploration, self-awareness, drug use and abuse, social media, and behavioral changes. These sessions help us identify gaps and look for ways to help our students and the community cope and address the challenges even with their limited resources.

There are still challenges facing the implementation of community initiatives and also a lack of sustainable and stable incomes for most of the families living in the slum making it difficult to feed their families and also save for the knowns and unknowns. 

Despite the challenges, we are grateful for the strides made so far and we look forward to doing more. We will be sure to share the updates.

Thank you for your continued support.

Alfred M Aswani

Links:

• School Website
• Community Website