By Mulengera Reporters
As of 1986, Uganda had growing numbers of orphaned and vulnerable children who had lost hope after their parents were lost to war and HIV/Aids, which was ravaging villages in especially rural Uganda.
Janet Kataha Museveni, barely one year into the office of First Lady, sought to help. She specifically founded Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) into which her fellow women were mobilized to enrol and become members.
Through UWESO, millions of orphans and widows were impacted as they battled stigma, destitution and other challenges. Even after war and HIV-related vulnerability reduced with passage of time, even today UWESO (which will be marking 40 years of existence later this year) remains relevant.
Indeed, at its children’s homes such as the one at Masulita in Wakiso district, UWESO continues receiving vulnerable children who are helped to undergo rehabilitation, and have second chance at education or even be reintegrated back to their communities of origin once the family-tracing phase is successfully concluded.
These children are identified and brought to UWESO mainly through collaboration with local governments like KCCA for Kampala’s case and actors like community development officers and probation officers from the rest of the districts.
Sometimes, these are children who have been abandoned or are found to be struggling to head homes at the age as young as 13 years or even less. Quite often, videos depicting vulnerability in such child-headed home go viral and thereby enabling women in the UWESO universe to take note of the same and reach out offering help in close collaboration with probation officers who are available in every district of Uganda.
IN COMES KAGUHANGIRE: UWESO, whose overall patron remains first lady Janet Museveni, has been even more active since January 2024 when Mrs Jolly Kaguhangire was tapped to become the CEO for the organization. She works under a Governing Board which currently is headed or chaired by corporate leader Olive Lumonya, who boasts of many years of experience doing charity work.
Information obtained from open sources indicates that the UWESO structure, which Kaguhangire has leveraged to deliver big things in the last two years and four months period, comprises of NEC/Board, the National Executive Committee and the Branch Executive Committees which are available in every part of Uganda.
As of January 2024, KCCA closely working with security agencies was stuck with over 1,000 vulnerable and homeless children who had been evacuated from the streets as Uganda prepared to host the NAM conference. These, upon rescue from street life, were taken to UWESO children’s homes like Masulita for screening and further management.
The Kaguhangire-led UWESO had to ensure that they are screened and their needs assessed. It was a huge logistical operation but Kaguhangire was resilient.
Many were helped to trace their families back home, undergo rehabilitation and mindset change at UWESO homes and were subsequently reunited with their families or helped to enroll in school to have a more hopeful future.
Many were from Karamoja and UWESO had to work with the area NGOs and NAPAK local government to ensure that the appropriate schools are identified and the children are followed up to see how they are coping.
During the years leading up to January 2024, UWESO had scaled down on the schooling program and much of the emphasis was on family tracing and helping children to reunite with family.
Kaguhangire, being the motherly lady with profound love for children, insisted that, notwithstanding the resource constraints, the schooling program once again becomes prioritized in all UWESO interventions. She was also deliberate about strengthening the rehabilitation program at Masulita to ensure that children change, reform and also appreciate the need to love family and to also stay in school once enrolled. She deliberately strengthened rehabilitation by prioritizing recruitment of the relevant staff (like social workers) at centers like the UWESO children village.
Some of the children on the streets come from well to do families but run away and are uncomfortable staying there because of mistreatment by stepmoms and other actors. Some are running away because their parents prefer to expose them to child labor or even early marriages in return for money, as low as Shs200,000/= in some vulnerable communities in places like Karamoja.
Children who, after rehabilitation, refuse to go back home are kept at the UWESO homes from where they are aided to access formal education at the nearby schools. Instead of merely sitting in the office at the national secretariat in Kampala, Kaguhangire often goes to the UWESO homes and personally gets involved in talking to and encouraging the children while motivating their care givers. She always insists that children are deliberately encouraged about self love while feeling a sense of belonging while at the UWESO home, which is how they gradually give up any thought of ever returning to the street.
Kaguhangire also prioritized direct engagement with children and women in the communities, while closely working with branch executive committees. She has used such outreach programs to get feedback on how to strengthen the organization while re-energizing UWESO women in all UWESO regions of Uganda. Gratefully, the Board and NEC members have been very supportive of the CEO in that regard. Such outreach programs have also been used to sensitize parents and children about the free education opportunities that have been made available by the GoU under the UPE and USE programs. They have repeatedly been encouraged to take advantage of such opportunities.
Because the rehabilitation program at Masulita has been comprehensive, fewer children these days run away from schools once reintegrated back home in districts like Napak-and return to the streets-than used to be the case before January 2024.
For the children who end up staying at Masulita either because they are disinterested in returning home or because their families can’t be traced, they are enrolled into partner schools nearby or into UWESO’s own ECD centre, in case of children aged 4 years and below. Some children are enrolled into the UWESO home when they are too young to even speak in order to aid the identification of their families. That category ends up staying put at Masulita.
To ensure that the Masulita Home (sitting on hundreds of acres of land) is viable and sustainable in the long term, Kaguhangire has prioritized the putting in place of infrastructure to support and enhance poultry and piggery projects. These have been dedicated to ensuring that the home produces enough eggs to feed the children, though some of it can be sold off to support revenue generation.
Maize processing facilities have also been revamped at Masulita for the production of posho to feed the children. Mrs. Kaguhangire has also introduced coffee farming at the Masulita land so that the place can be put to additional use. Several acres are already under coffee farming for sale in order to enlarge on revenue generation streams.
Yet besides Masulita, where hundreds of Uganda’s would-be vulnerable children continue to be impacted, Mrs. Kaguhangire has also done a lot to improve and raise the profile of the Migera in Nakasongola district which is another UWESO centre. At Migera, UWESO has a secondary school which serves the purpose of ensuring that Uganda’s children from deprived backgrounds are enabled to access quality education at an affordable fee.
Several hundreds of boys and girls from financially-deprived backgrounds are enrolled and the school continues to register impressive results at both O & A levels. It’s a boarding school which UWESO uses to ensure access to quality education for such boys and girls. The idea is to have a vibrant vocation training section too at Masulita in order to advantage Uganda’s sons and daughters who end up not making it to university directly.
Meant to ensure that UWESO institutions give a comprehensive education from nursery/ECD all the way to tertiary level, the vocational school is currently being set up while securing the necessary authorization of the relevant GoU agencies.
Mrs. Kaguhangire, who is deliberately working towards decentralizing UWESO functions and access to its services under the different UWESO regions, late last year must have felt motivated and emboldened in her endeavors when President Museveni and First Lady Janet Museveni visited the Migera Secondary School and spent an entire Sunday afternoon interacting with and motivating students and the rest of the guests who came to participate in celebrations to mark Janet Kataha’s birthday.
The big man from Rwakitura registered his appreciation for the good charitable work Mrs. Kaguhangire and her team were doing at Migera under the auspices of UWESO, in order to impact Uganda’s posterity. He offered personal support, with which the UWESO fraternity members are hopeful the scenery at the Migera School is destined to change for ever. Gen Museveni promised support to some of the infrastructural projects at Migera on top of boosting library and laboratory facilities at the campus which operates on hundreds of acres. Besides the learning and training programs, there is plenty of crop and livestock farming activities going on at the Migera campus.
In the presence of the President, Mrs. Kaguhangire enumerated and thanked philanthropy-minded individual actors and corporate organizations which continue to generously contribute resources to support the continued and sustained learned of hundreds of young Ugandans, both boys and girls. All said and done, Mrs. Kaguhangire is deliberately determined to continue impacting young Ugandans through the all-round programs and nurturing that continue taking place at the different UWESO homes and centers. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
