Gulu has a stimstamzuma (had to make up a word) amount of NGOs and we visited a small portion of them. They are all different, but some are doing a lot of sustainable effective work, but running out of funding so come on for the NGO ride...
Part of our program is visiting NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and there is no better place to do this than Gulu and Northern Uganda as NGOs are everywhere. We learn more about how NGOs operate within a conflict, or now a close-conflict area, and also to see the possibilities of partnerships with Chaford, the organization we work with here.
I think it is important to explain a little bit more about Chaford-Uganda as I learn more about them as the trip goes on since we were not told the full story at first for why they exist. Basically, Chaford, Charity for Rural Development, came about because no one was doing work in Atiak, a region that was absolutely destroyed from the war as it served as the crossroads for the Lord’s Resistance Army (the rebel army) and the military who would engage in heavy fighting in this region. All the board members are from Atiak so they set up Chaford to work with the rural population there. Each of the board members also work with different NGOs or schools and have experience in these fields. Many work with youth so that is a passion that Chaford has, but they do not have a consistent source of funding and are working on and applying for funds for several different projects so those are concerns that they are working on.
The first NGO that we visited was GUSCO (Gulu Support the Children Organisation (gusco.org)). They welcome anyone at anytime to visit (there were monos (white people) volunteering when we were there). They are an indigenous NGO that started in 1994 to take care of kids under 18 that were captured by the LRA. They have rehabbed 8,200 kids back into the community. They have community outreach operations and also centers (one of which we visited) where they provide clothes, food, counseling and help the children find their families. This is especially difficult with former child soldiers and those captured by the LRA as the parents are often now in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps and they were not in the camps when their children were taken. Once GUSCO reunites the child with their family (either guardians or extended relatives (they have never not found someone's family!), they also help counsel the family and make follow-ups for one year.
The Center has structured activities with a time table for every hours so the children feel busy all the time with the evening being for games and sports. They reminded us that they are a small NGO with not enough funding to pay for the children's school funds, but they help one time with clothes and materials for their formal education. If they come back and can't do formal education, they teach them technical skills. They also train teachers in primary schools with psycho-social support because the kids who have been captured will misbehave in schools.
Child mothers come here too as "they are given to men at a very young age". Here they get money (non-refundable) to start income-generating activities and get training in different activities. A majority of the activities are buying produce and selling it at the market. It is important that GUSCO provides a place for them as some parents do not welcome them back given their pregnancy. The GUSCO representative that was describing this to us pointed to some of the child mothers outside gathering food and water. I looked into the eyes of the babies on their back. They were so big, so full, he has done a lot while on his mom's back, worked, lived, struggled, but he's on there, and he's not crying from seeing me so he's not afraid of "munus" (foreigners). They currently have seven children living at the Center: 5 children from 14-17 and two babies. Six of the children are boys as they told us that there are usually more boys than girls.
They have a 300 kid capacity and they had this for quite some time especially during the military's Operation Iron Fist Campaign (www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/888) and then they would stay for 6-8 weeks. Now and when there are so few kids, they provide much one-on-one care and focus on field work. They also have programs to get kids from the center into town and they call these country walks. Their parents are also allowed to visit and do so. They tell us that the kids come from the Child Protection Unit where they are screened for injuries or diseases. The average stay is 3 weeks though there has even been a kid that stayed for three plus years because of their illnesses.
GUSCO relies on relatives to take care of orphans as the Acholi tradition is a relative takes care of orphans and GUSCO has never fostered a child! They do training for these relatives and work hard to find the families through family tracing rather than relying on the community or the family to find the kid. Some of the ways they would find this information is through rebels who would call and ask the kids who their family was doing or the rebels would ask this on the radio.
We also asked if a family has ever rejected a rehabbed child and they said very few do. We also asked the average time of a child in the Bush and they said it's hard to tell as a child can be abducted and the next day rescued. Child moms have an average time captured of six years. The reason why some kids hesitate coming back is because the rebels tell them that if they come back then the people in the communities will poison them so GUSCO brings support for them until that fear subsides and then the kids are able to open up. They keep them busy with football helps this and on Tuesday and Thursday they have dance and traditional ceremonies.
One of the things we realized walking around there were the walls on the inside of buildings have drawings of helicopters and big guns and gunfire as kids would even stand on windows to draw. GUSCO said when the kids first come to the center they draw things like this from the bush then about half way there they draw about the center like soccer and the dances and then towards the end they draw about wanting to go to school and stuff after the center. You can learn a lot from kids drawings here and what we learned from speaking with an art therapy teacher from the Art Institute in Chicago is that you simply let the child draw what ever is on their mind and don't tell them what to draw or try to interpret what they drew for them, but let them tell you. GUSCO does this as they simply ask them to draw what they think and the class therapy teachers at GUSCO keep the drawings and assess them.
GUSCO has also built two new large permanent housing structures as UNICEF said that they are expecting a lot of youth to come into town if peace is realized, while before there were mostly temporary tent-like structures. They always emphasized that people had freedom here. Also, when we left we saw two white flags on top of their huge protected barbed wire fence that covers the center. They said the meaning of the flags was when the rebels and government signed a cessation of hostilities. Everyone in the North had these flags up for a long time and they were for the kids here as a sign of no more bloodshed and as an expression of peace "that they can just look at each other and that people can be hopeful about peace here". The main offices for GUSCO are also connected to this center and the people on the board interact with people at the center.
The second NGO we visited was the Gulu Youth Center which targets youth (ages 10-24, though you are still considered a youth until 35 in Acholi culture) and kids in school come here for after-school programs while those out of school come here full time. The employee that we spoke with was named Kifola which means misfortunate, but there was a ceremony to lift the curse for all of the names so now she is fortunate. She told us how they are sponsored by Straight Talk, which is a non-profit that is sponsored by UNICEF. One of the main roles of the Youth Center is HIV-AIDS testing and counseling, which occurs on a first come, first serve basis as they open early and there are always tons of youth that come as there are more than the counselors are able to see. They also provide contraceptives, STI drug and treatment, have a radio show, do peer education, and distribute newspapers about issues kids face and social issues like the environment in the Acholi language of Luo and in English.
When we were there, we could see kids inside watching a film about abductions and there were sex awareness drawings and posters all over the building. The drawings were very graphic and had people dancing with their clothes falling off and the girl saying "Does AIDS exist?" and the boy she is dancing with saying "No!". There was also a poster for their Girl Talk which is a girls only discussion that hopefully some of my female group mates get a chance to go too. There are also tons of NGO sponsored posters in both Acholi and English including tons sponsored by the German Foundation for World Population. Most of the posters are saying don't do gift for gift sex which involves being with someone because they give you a cell phone or some gift and then you have to have sex with them. You see the competition of different NGO stances as some say "Always say no to sex", another says "Always say no to premarital sex" and another says "use a condom".
The third NGO we visited was Health Alert-Uganda, a local NGO that serves youth in Northern Uganda with HIV-AIDS. Their entry point are clinics where they follow pregnant moms with HIV-AIDS and ensure that they don't pass it on to their newborns. They disclose the test results to their husbands for them as husbands often have negative reactions to such results. As an organization, they try to figure out the number of youth who have HIV-AIDS as no one has been able to release the figure ("we need an IT wizard'). When we were there, there were about ten Ugandan students doing fieldwork and there would be several more from Concordia in Canada who would be here for two months like us (he said, "this should be longer as the first month you get oriented and then the second month you get al these ideas and then you go"). The walls of their offices, like many other NGOs, were filled with posters about sex, but here there was more of an emphasis on contraceptives, including oral ones, and many newspaper clippings with different treatments that have been discovered.
We spoke with Obutu Francis, their Advocacy/Communications Officer, who told us that they are a small family with more room. He said that their project started in July of 2004 and then they stayed for one year lobbying for funds until Save the Children learned that this local CBO (Community-Based Organization) did not have the capacity to help the increasing numbers of kids testing positive. At first, Health Alert just tested mothers, so Save the Children did work for funding and then in September of 2005 Health Alert received the funding to start working with kids. They began with 67 HIV positive kids in programs; now they have 300 plus! There are many HIV-AIDS NGOs here, but health alert is the only one that zeroes on kids. They bridge the gap between health facilities (hospitals that simply give ARVs (treatment) and don't see the effects of the drugs) and the communities. The communities carry the largest burden as hospitals have few employes and many patients so kids are taken care of by "old grandmas" as their parents died from HIV-AIDS. The knowledge of the grandmas is so little so they don't consider the importance of taking the kids to the hospitals, but instead it is more important that they weed in the garden or attend to burial ceremonies.
So Health Alert educates grandmothers and other guardians on HIV-AIDS and the importance of medicines and a plan for disclosure so the guardian understands why the child is seeing the doctor and taking medicines. Health Alert goes into the community and counts the pills for them and if they see they are few, they remind "the grandmas to go and get more". Health Alert also checks in with the hospitals to see a list of kids who have gone in for drug refills and ensures they take their pills. It is also important to note that the policy to allow testing for kids did not come until 2004 so now they need to push for children to get tested especially if their parents die. These kids need to get tested ASAP so they can get enrolled in treatment and services that are available from government hospitals and different providers as soon as possible.
Obutu also talked about the huge stigmatization that occurs in the community with taking care of a HIV-AIDS child. He said that people have viewed caring for a child with HIV-AIDS as a waste of resources as they saw it as a chronic infection, but Health Alert believes that if they can prolong a life for two days, then it is worth the resources (sounds like Paul Farmer's Partners in Health (www.pih.org), see the book about Farmer called Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder or any of Farmer's books on poverty and health). These kids have rights to medical services and to the information on why they are taking the drugs. The aforementioned stigmatization also meant that often adults would seek medical help and the kdis would be left at home sick. So Health Alert works to fight the stigmitzation and enroll more kids for services as they are the ony organication that goes and finds these kids and tests them (actually they are the first of this kind in Uganda!). Obutu emphasized the important of not waiting for kids to come to them, but going to them and letting them know about treatments and testing.
Members in our group asked if they have experience in far rural places like in the camps, and they said this was a big challenge as they can’t cover all of Gulu district so it depends on their funds. I was thinking that Chaford could partner with them and together they could apply for funds to target kids with HIV-AIDS in far rural places. UNICEF gave emergency funds for one year (this year) to target areas that are hard to reach like Atiak. Health Alert currently needs a donor that will support them in HIV-AIDS counseling and testing. Most donors are encouraging NGOs to implement preemptive programs and not treatment, but there are more needs in the community than simply testing kids. ARVs (anti-retroviral virus) drugs do expire and people are dying in the camps day and night from the lack of active drug treatment, yet rigorous programs that seek out those with HIV-AIDS and monitor their drug use can and have worked to reduce these deaths.
Another way Chaford could partner with Health Alert came up in the discussion of nutrition and the importance of proper nutrition for children with HIV-AIDS. We were helping Chaford with a proposal for a small grant from USAID-VOCA that would provide them with funding to do agriculture and nutrition trainings in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Camps, specifically including children affected by HIV-AIDS. USAID recommended that Chaford show partnerships with other NGOs to increase the expertise and resources of their grant proposal. Health Alert described how they have struggled nutrition-wise with the food that the World Food Programme provides for the Camps. The food that they provide is for IDPs and not for kids or those with HIV-AIDS because the food does not have the nutritional value that they need. So Health Alert advocates and is looking for funding to set up a nutrition program for the kids with HIV-AIDS to educate people for why they need the nutrition and the different measurements with the drugs and such. They need to have a “livelihood intervention to strengthen the families and educate them that the most important thing is that they take the drugs and need food with nutrients to do that as the kids are still going”.
He also mentioned that the Camps made NGOs work easy as it was easy to find those with HIV-AIDS. A big problem that they will have to consider is what to do once most people go back. Currently, Health Alert is a part of a consortium of HIV-AIDS organizations that can help them get funds and help the Acholi (the peoples of Gulu) best. Obutu emphasized the importance of this as they share who does what tasks so that they save resources and learn and collaborate and share skills at different partnership meeting that they have. Maybe Chaford should join or advocate for a consortium that focuses on rural development for the camps or one that works for Atiak?
He also described how there are lots of quarrels in the house from HIV-AIDS testing as families will yell at those who may have brought the disease. Obutu says that “Smoke has already entered the home, it doesn’t matter who let it in, let’s get ride of it”. Health Alert then went on to describe another problem of when men use women as litmus papers or use their kids and say if they are negative then I am negative too.
Obutu Francis is a very charismatic man who is known throughout Gulu as people listen to his health reports and advocacy on Mega 102.1, a local radio station. He once had the Minister of Health on the radio to speak and he made him promise to include children with HIV-AIDS in the government’s HIV-AIDS campaign and the Minister said he would. He has worked with many health and children’s organizations before, such as Uganda Red Cross, the International Red Cross, and SOS, an orphanage in Gulu.
Obutu ended with how Health Alert just celebrated Health Alert Day (July 17), which was the day they started, but that now they need funding to keep serving kids with HIV-AIDS in Northern Uganda. Kosko, a field officer for Chaford who was with us, said following Obutu’s talk, “Now we are brothers and sisters. Whatever problems affect me also affect you so we need to give a helping hand to link Health Alert to possible places. So if we can help with proposal writing or we have contacts with people who work with this population then we need to do whatever we can so Health Alert does not die and they can continue to serve the community. So if anyone can help do it”.
Obutu added that Health Alert provides help with their homes visits and follow-ups and seeing if kids are taking their medicines. Also, they help the environment of the kids by setting up school programs to educate students. They do not select schools but go where the kids are that they serve. He emphasized that everyone has been affected or infected by HIV-AIDS and that all our families have cousins so the problems are seen by all even if one’s immediate family has not been infected. He finished with “at the end of the day, all we are doing is to contribute to the community because you come here and it does not mean that there are not problems in the U.S., but here you see the need is so great”.
Telling you about Health Alert is especially important as their funding from DANIDA from 2005 expires in a month and they are trying to find funding or their organization will have to close. If you know of any organizations, foundations, anyone interested in helping children with HIV-AIDS, please e-mail Obutu at healthalertug@yahoo.co.uk.
The most recent NGO that we have visited in Gulu was Heifer International. We saw their sign up North from us so we decided to walk there and find their offices since several of our groups members have purchased cows and such from them as gifts for people. We walked everywhere for an hour and could not find their office and people from shops and other NGOs told us that people were always asking about Heifer (pronounced High-fer by Ugandans). When we found that their old office is now occupied by GUSCO, Rachael and I decided to take out their sign so that no one else would not find them. As we were almost done uprooting the sign, a man jumped off his boda (small motorbike that everyone takes as a taxi everywhere) and asked us why we were taking apart his sign. We told him how it was for “public service” as people would go looking for Heifer and not find it.
He said that their offices had moved down the road and that if someone would have told him, he would have taken down the sign earlier. He introduced himself as Amos, the Public Relations for the Northern Uganda branch of Heifer, and we asked if we could visit the office and exchanged contact information.
So after all that, several days later we visited his office which was just one small room (with a paper cow) in the ACORD, another NGO, offices as he was currently the only staff member for the Northern Uganda branch as they are in the process of expansion. He is hoping that USAID will give funds in September, “God willing”, to begin full operations outside their area and get four more people.
He said that Heifer has not been active lately because the insurgency has taken over the environment of the people they serve and depleted livestock and people have all been captures and forced to live in Camps where they rely on food from the World Food Programme. He said that before the insurgency (the war), every home in Gulu district had livestock and now once they are permitted to go back, Heifer wants to give them livestock to go home with. The numbers demand huge amounts, but the resources are limited.
Heifer gives exotic cows for milk production because if they improve households then it increases their choices rather than simply selling cows to be killed for meat. This is also important as their livestock were mostly left alone by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who stole the cattle at first to kill it for meat, but all Heifer animals are zero grazing which means that they stay in shaded homes and do not walk and so the rebels came to move them and the animals become aggressive and cannot walk so they kill them and the meat is not nice as they are exotic animals used for milk. So the LRA called them “muzungu cows” (foreigner cows; we are also called “muzungus”) and this saved their meat because all their dairy animals were left alone.
Heifer also does gender equity training as in families there is too much animal management that is gender-specific. So instead of doing it alone, they tell people to look collective management and see the animal as the family’s and not just the head of the household’s. This improves the relationships in the home. They also have micro-enterprise groups to sell milk and such from the animals, and most of the people in these are women while men are in animal traction, such as ox-plowing. We also asked what happens when someone in the U.S. buys a cow and he said it goes to a specific family in need.
A very unique aspect of Heifer is the pass on a gift program the family passes on the first female offspring of their animal to another family so it’s a way to sustain the process as beneficiaries become donors and Heifer can pull out of the area in the future. This program is “the benchmark for their operations and for their sustainability”. They trust the community to do it and they have project leaders and extenstion staff of Heifer who provide trainings and monitor the livestock. Amos was very knowledgeable and passionate about Heifer as he received a dairy cow from them and it is still living and he likes community work so he applied to help and he has been working for them for five years now. He is the definition of passing it on.
Some members of our group also visited S.O.S. (sos-childrensvillages.org), an orphanage, which is should not exist in Acholi culture as there is always someone in the extended family to take care of the orphaned child. Even if a member of the extended family would not takes this responsibility at first, social pressure is usually so large on the person that they take the kid in so as not to be ostracized. The fact that there is an orphanage shows how damaging the war has been to these people as there are not even extended family members alive, accessible, and/or capable of taking care of the child.
Finally, we also visited the Invisible Children's (invisiblechildren.com) bracelet making huts at the Camp where we are doing our agriculture skills training. The work at these huts depressed some people in our group as the artists did not have any creativity or initiative or input in what they were doing. They all simply made the same looking black bracelet and all they knew was that people in the US bought these and that some of the money from them would also go to fund students to go to school. Since Invisible Children does not do taxes we cannot be entirely sure where the rest of the money goes, and though this is an income generating activity that is providing income for these people there and letting them work in a shaded hut in their community, what happens when people in the US stop buying these bracelets? To see an organization that does fair trade crafts and clothes well, support Marketplace: Handwork of India (marketplaceindia.org) which always needs interns and which supports the creativity of the artisans who are a part of every facet of the company and are in control of what they sell. Also, see Maya Works (mayaworks.org) and go to 10,000 Villages if you're in Chicago.
Ok that was long, but I thought the visits were fascinating so I'll keep my later entries shorter (I'll try my best).
Afoyo,
Nikolai "The Last Born" AnywarGulu has a stimstamzuma (had to make up a word) amount of NGOs and we visited a small portion of them. They are all different, but some are doing a lot of sustainable effective work, but running out of funding so come on for the NGO ride...
Part of our program is visiting NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and there is no better place to do this than Gulu and Northern Uganda as NGOs are everywhere. We learn more about how NGOs operate within a conflict, or now a close-conflict area, and also to see the possibilities of partnerships with Chaford, the organization we work with here.
I think it is important to explain a little bit more about Chaford-Uganda as I learn more about them as the trip goes on since we were not told the full story at first for why they exist. Basically, Chaford, Charity for Rural Development, came about because no one was doing work in Atiak, a region that was absolutely destroyed from the war as it served as the crossroads for the Lord’s Resistance Army (the rebel army) and the military who would engage in heavy fighting in this region. All the board members are from Atiak so they set up Chaford to work with the rural population there. Each of the board members also work with different NGOs or schools and have experience in these fields. Many work with youth so that is a passion that Chaford has, but they do not have a consistent source of funding and are working on and applying for funds for several different projects so those are concerns that they are working on.
The first NGO that we visited was GUSCO (Gulu Support the Children Organisation (gusco.org)). They welcome anyone at anytime to visit (there were monos (white people) volunteering when we were there). They are an indigenous NGO that started in 1994 to take care of kids under 18 that were captured by the LRA. They have rehabbed 8,200 kids back into the community. They have community outreach operations and also centers (one of which we visited) where they provide clothes, food, counseling and help the children find their families. This is especially difficult with former child soldiers and those captured by the LRA as the parents are often now in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps and they were not in the camps when their children were taken. Once GUSCO reunites the child with their family (either guardians or extended relatives (they have never not found someone's family!), they also help counsel the family and make follow-ups for one year.
The Center has structured activities with a time table for every hours so the children feel busy all the time with the evening being for games and sports. They reminded us that they are a small NGO with not enough funding to pay for the children's school funds, but they help one time with clothes and materials for their formal education. If they come back and can't do formal education, they teach them technical skills. They also train teachers in primary schools with psycho-social support because the kids who have been captured will misbehave in schools.
Child mothers come here too as "they are given to men at a very young age". Here they get money (non-refundable) to start income-generating activities and get training in different activities. A majority of the activities are buying produce and selling it at the market. It is important that GUSCO provides a place for them as some parents do not welcome them back given their pregnancy. The GUSCO representative that was describing this to us pointed to some of the child mothers outside gathering food and water. I looked into the eyes of the babies on their back. They were so big, so full, he has done a lot while on his mom's back, worked, lived, struggled, but he's on there, and he's not crying from seeing me so he's not afraid of "munus" (foreigners). They currently have seven children living at the Center: 5 children from 14-17 and two babies. Six of the children are boys as they told us that there are usually more boys than girls.
They have a 300 kid capacity and they had this for quite some time especially during the military's Operation Iron Fist Campaign (www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/888) and then they would stay for 6-8 weeks. Now and when there are so few kids, they provide much one-on-one care and focus on field work. They also have programs to get kids from the center into town and they call these country walks. Their parents are also allowed to visit and do so. They tell us that the kids come from the Child Protection Unit where they are screened for injuries or diseases. The average stay is 3 weeks though there has even been a kid that stayed for three plus years because of their illnesses.
GUSCO relies on relatives to take care of orphans as the Acholi tradition is a relative takes care of orphans and GUSCO has never fostered a child! They do training for these relatives and work hard to find the families through family tracing rather than relying on the community or the family to find the kid. Some of the ways they would find this information is through rebels who would call and ask the kids who their family was doing or the rebels would ask this on the radio.
We also asked if a family has ever rejected a rehabbed child and they said very few do. We also asked the average time of a child in the Bush and they said it's hard to tell as a child can be abducted and the next day rescued. Child moms have an average time captured of six years. The reason why some kids hesitate coming back is because the rebels tell them that if they come back then the people in the communities will poison them so GUSCO brings support for them until that fear subsides and then the kids are able to open up. They keep them busy with football helps this and on Tuesday and Thursday they have dance and traditional ceremonies.
One of the things we realized walking around there were the walls on the inside of buildings have drawings of helicopters and big guns and gunfire as kids would even stand on windows to draw. GUSCO said when the kids first come to the center they draw things like this from the bush then about half way there they draw about the center like soccer and the dances and then towards the end they draw about wanting to go to school and stuff after the center. You can learn a lot from kids drawings here and what we learned from speaking with an art therapy teacher from the Art Institute in Chicago is that you simply let the child draw what ever is on their mind and don't tell them what to draw or try to interpret what they drew for them, but let them tell you. GUSCO does this as they simply ask them to draw what they think and the class therapy teachers at GUSCO keep the drawings and assess them.
GUSCO has also built two new large permanent housing structures as UNICEF said that they are expecting a lot of youth to come into town if peace is realized, while before there were mostly temporary tent-like structures. They always emphasized that people had freedom here. Also, when we left we saw two white flags on top of their huge protected barbed wire fence that covers the center. They said the meaning of the flags was when the rebels and government signed a cessation of hostilities. Everyone in the North had these flags up for a long time and they were for the kids here as a sign of no more bloodshed and as an expression of peace "that they can just look at each other and that people can be hopeful about peace here". The main offices for GUSCO are also connected to this center and the people on the board interact with people at the center.
The second NGO we visited was the Gulu Youth Center which targets youth (ages 10-24, though you are still considered a youth until 35 in Acholi culture) and kids in school come here for after-school programs while those out of school come here full time. The employee that we spoke with was named Kifola which means misfortunate, but there was a ceremony to lift the curse for all of the names so now she is fortunate. She told us how they are sponsored by Straight Talk, which is a non-profit that is sponsored by UNICEF. One of the main roles of the Youth Center is HIV-AIDS testing and counseling, which occurs on a first come, first serve basis as they open early and there are always tons of youth that come as there are more than the counselors are able to see. They also provide contraceptives, STI drug and treatment, have a radio show, do peer education, and distribute newspapers about issues kids face and social issues like the environment in the Acholi language of Luo and in English.
When we were there, we could see kids inside watching a film about abductions and there were sex awareness drawings and posters all over the building. The drawings were very graphic and had people dancing with their clothes falling off and the girl saying "Does AIDS exist?" and the boy she is dancing with saying "No!". There was also a poster for their Girl Talk which is a girls only discussion that hopefully some of my female group mates get a chance to go too. There are also tons of NGO sponsored posters in both Acholi and English including tons sponsored by the German Foundation for World Population. Most of the posters are saying don't do gift for gift sex which involves being with someone because they give you a cell phone or some gift and then you have to have sex with them. You see the competition of different NGO stances as some say "Always say no to sex", another says "Always say no to premarital sex" and another says "use a condom".
The third NGO we visited was Health Alert-Uganda, a local NGO that serves youth in Northern Uganda with HIV-AIDS. Their entry point are clinics where they follow pregnant moms with HIV-AIDS and ensure that they don't pass it on to their newborns. They disclose the test results to their husbands for them as husbands often have negative reactions to such results. As an organization, they try to figure out the number of youth who have HIV-AIDS as no one has been able to release the figure ("we need an IT wizard'). When we were there, there were about ten Ugandan students doing fieldwork and there would be several more from Concordia in Canada who would be here for two months like us (he said, "this should be longer as the first month you get oriented and then the second month you get al these ideas and then you go"). The walls of their offices, like many other NGOs, were filled with posters about sex, but here there was more of an emphasis on contraceptives, including oral ones, and many newspaper clippings with different treatments that have been discovered.
We spoke with Obutu Francis, their Advocacy/Communications Officer, who told us that they are a small family with more room. He said that their project started in July of 2004 and then they stayed for one year lobbying for funds until Save the Children learned that this local CBO (Community-Based Organization) did not have the capacity to help the increasing numbers of kids testing positive. At first, Health Alert just tested mothers, so Save the Children did work for funding and then in September of 2005 Health Alert received the funding to start working with kids. They began with 67 HIV positive kids in programs; now they have 300 plus! There are many HIV-AIDS NGOs here, but health alert is the only one that zeroes on kids. They bridge the gap between health facilities (hospitals that simply give ARVs (treatment) and don't see the effects of the drugs) and the communities. The communities carry the largest burden as hospitals have few employes and many patients so kids are taken care of by "old grandmas" as their parents died from HIV-AIDS. The knowledge of the grandmas is so little so they don't consider the importance of taking the kids to the hospitals, but instead it is more important that they weed in the garden or attend to burial ceremonies.
So Health Alert educates grandmothers and other guardians on HIV-AIDS and the importance of medicines and a plan for disclosure so the guardian understands why the child is seeing the doctor and taking medicines. Health Alert goes into the community and counts the pills for them and if they see they are few, they remind "the grandmas to go and get more". Health Alert also checks in with the hospitals to see a list of kids who have gone in for drug refills and ensures they take their pills. It is also important to note that the policy to allow testing for kids did not come until 2004 so now they need to push for children to get tested especially if their parents die. These kids need to get tested ASAP so they can get enrolled in treatment and services that are available from government hospitals and different providers as soon as possible.
Obutu also talked about the huge stigmatization that occurs in the community with taking care of a HIV-AIDS child. He said that people have viewed caring for a child with HIV-AIDS as a waste of resources as they saw it as a chronic infection, but Health Alert believes that if they can prolong a life for two days, then it is worth the resources (sounds like Paul Farmer's Partners in Health (www.pih.org), see the book about Farmer called Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder or any of Farmer's books on poverty and health). These kids have rights to medical services and to the information on why they are taking the drugs. The aforementioned stigmatization also meant that often adults would seek medical help and the kdis would be left at home sick. So Health Alert works to fight the stigmitzation and enroll more kids for services as they are the ony organication that goes and finds these kids and tests them (actually they are the first of this kind in Uganda!). Obutu emphasized the important of not waiting for kids to come to them, but going to them and letting them know about treatments and testing.
Members in our group asked if they have experience in far rural places like in the camps, and they said this was a big challenge as they can’t cover all of Gulu district so it depends on their funds. I was thinking that Chaford could partner with them and together they could apply for funds to target kids with HIV-AIDS in far rural places. UNICEF gave emergency funds for one year (this year) to target areas that are hard to reach like Atiak. Health Alert currently needs a donor that will support them in HIV-AIDS counseling and testing. Most donors are encouraging NGOs to implement preemptive programs and not treatment, but there are more needs in the community than simply testing kids. ARVs (anti-retroviral virus) drugs do expire and people are dying in the camps day and night from the lack of active drug treatment, yet rigorous programs that seek out those with HIV-AIDS and monitor their drug use can and have worked to reduce these deaths.
Another way Chaford could partner with Health Alert came up in the discussion of nutrition and the importance of proper nutrition for children with HIV-AIDS. We were helping Chaford with a proposal for a small grant from USAID-VOCA that would provide them with funding to do agriculture and nutrition trainings in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Camps, specifically including children affected by HIV-AIDS. USAID recommended that Chaford show partnerships with other NGOs to increase the expertise and resources of their grant proposal. Health Alert described how they have struggled nutrition-wise with the food that the World Food Programme provides for the Camps. The food that they provide is for IDPs and not for kids or those with HIV-AIDS because the food does not have the nutritional value that they need. So Health Alert advocates and is looking for funding to set up a nutrition program for the kids with HIV-AIDS to educate people for why they need the nutrition and the different measurements with the drugs and such. They need to have a “livelihood intervention to strengthen the families and educate them that the most important thing is that they take the drugs and need food with nutrients to do that as the kids are still going”.
He also mentioned that the Camps made NGOs work easy as it was easy to find those with HIV-AIDS. A big problem that they will have to consider is what to do once most people go back. Currently, Health Alert is a part of a consortium of HIV-AIDS organizations that can help them get funds and help the Acholi (the peoples of Gulu) best. Obutu emphasized the importance of this as they share who does what tasks so that they save resources and learn and collaborate and share skills at different partnership meeting that they have. Maybe Chaford should join or advocate for a consortium that focuses on rural development for the camps or one that works for Atiak?
He also described how there are lots of quarrels in the house from HIV-AIDS testing as families will yell at those who may have brought the disease. Obutu says that “Smoke has already entered the home, it doesn’t matter who let it in, let’s get ride of it”. Health Alert then went on to describe another problem of when men use women as litmus papers or use their kids and say if they are negative then I am negative too.
Obutu Francis is a very charismatic man who is known throughout Gulu as people listen to his health reports and advocacy on Mega 102.1, a local radio station. He once had the Minister of Health on the radio to speak and he made him promise to include children with HIV-AIDS in the government’s HIV-AIDS campaign and the Minister said he would. He has worked with many health and children’s organizations before, such as Uganda Red Cross, the International Red Cross, and SOS, an orphanage in Gulu.
Obutu ended with how Health Alert just celebrated Health Alert Day (July 17), which was the day they started, but that now they need funding to keep serving kids with HIV-AIDS in Northern Uganda. Kosko, a field officer for Chaford who was with us, said following Obutu’s talk, “Now we are brothers and sisters. Whatever problems affect me also affect you so we need to give a helping hand to link Health Alert to possible places. So if we can help with proposal writing or we have contacts with people who work with this population then we need to do whatever we can so Health Alert does not die and they can continue to serve the community. So if anyone can help do it”.
Obutu added that Health Alert provides help with their homes visits and follow-ups and seeing if kids are taking their medicines. Also, they help the environment of the kids by setting up school programs to educate students. They do not select schools but go where the kids are that they serve. He emphasized that everyone has been affected or infected by HIV-AIDS and that all our families have cousins so the problems are seen by all even if one’s immediate family has not been infected. He finished with “at the end of the day, all we are doing is to contribute to the community because you come here and it does not mean that there are not problems in the U.S., but here you see the need is so great”.
Telling you about Health Alert is especially important as their funding from DANIDA from 2005 expires in a month and they are trying to find funding or their organization will have to close. If you know of any organizations, foundations, anyone interested in helping children with HIV-AIDS, please e-mail Obutu at healthalertug@yahoo.co.uk.
The most recent NGO that we have visited in Gulu was Heifer International. We saw their sign up North from us so we decided to walk there and find their offices since several of our groups members have purchased cows and such from them as gifts for people. We walked everywhere for an hour and could not find their office and people from shops and other NGOs told us that people were always asking about Heifer (pronounced High-fer by Ugandans). When we found that their old office is now occupied by GUSCO, Rachael and I decided to take out their sign so that no one else would not find them. As we were almost done uprooting the sign, a man jumped off his boda (small motorbike that everyone takes as a taxi everywhere) and asked us why we were taking apart his sign. We told him how it was for “public service” as people would go looking for Heifer and not find it.
He said that their offices had moved down the road and that if someone would have told him, he would have taken down the sign earlier. He introduced himself as Amos, the Public Relations for the Northern Uganda branch of Heifer, and we asked if we could visit the office and exchanged contact information.
So after all that, several days later we visited his office which was just one small room (with a paper cow) in the ACORD, another NGO, offices as he was currently the only staff member for the Northern Uganda branch as they are in the process of expansion. He is hoping that USAID will give funds in September, “God willing”, to begin full operations outside their area and get four more people.
He said that Heifer has not been active lately because the insurgency has taken over the environment of the people they serve and depleted livestock and people have all been captures and forced to live in Camps where they rely on food from the World Food Programme. He said that before the insurgency (the war), every home in Gulu district had livestock and now once they are permitted to go back, Heifer wants to give them livestock to go home with. The numbers demand huge amounts, but the resources are limited.
Heifer gives exotic cows for milk production because if they improve households then it increases their choices rather than simply selling cows to be killed for meat. This is also important as their livestock were mostly left alone by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who stole the cattle at first to kill it for meat, but all Heifer animals are zero grazing which means that they stay in shaded homes and do not walk and so the rebels came to move them and the animals become aggressive and cannot walk so they kill them and the meat is not nice as they are exotic animals used for milk. So the LRA called them “muzungu cows” (foreigner cows; we are also called “muzungus”) and this saved their meat because all their dairy animals were left alone.
Heifer also does gender equity training as in families there is too much animal management that is gender-specific. So instead of doing it alone, they tell people to look collective management and see the animal as the family’s and not just the head of the household’s. This improves the relationships in the home. They also have micro-enterprise groups to sell milk and such from the animals, and most of the people in these are women while men are in animal traction, such as ox-plowing. We also asked what happens when someone in the U.S. buys a cow and he said it goes to a specific family in need.
A very unique aspect of Heifer is the pass on a gift program the family passes on the first female offspring of their animal to another family so it’s a way to sustain the process as beneficiaries become donors and Heifer can pull out of the area in the future. This program is “the benchmark for their operations and for their sustainability”. They trust the community to do it and they have project leaders and extenstion staff of Heifer who provide trainings and monitor the livestock. Amos was very knowledgeable and passionate about Heifer as he received a dairy cow from them and it is still living and he likes community work so he applied to help and he has been working for them for five years now. He is the definition of passing it on.
Some members of our group also visited S.O.S. (sos-childrensvillages.org), an orphanage, which is should not exist in Acholi culture as there is always someone in the extended family to take care of the orphaned child. Even if a member of the extended family would not takes this responsibility at first, social pressure is usually so large on the person that they take the kid in so as not to be ostracized. The fact that there is an orphanage shows how damaging the war has been to these people as there are not even extended family members alive, accessible, and/or capable of taking care of the child.
Finally, we also visited the Invisible Children's (invisiblechildren.com) bracelet making huts at the Camp where we are doing our agriculture skills training. The work at these huts depressed some people in our group as the artists did not have any creativity or initiative or input in what they were doing. They all simply made the same looking black bracelet and all they knew was that people in the US bought these and that some of the money from them would also go to fund students to go to school. Since Invisible Children does not do taxes we cannot be entirely sure where the rest of the money goes, and though this is an income generating activity that is providing income for these people there and letting them work in a shaded hut in their community, what happens when people in the US stop buying these bracelets? To see an organization that does fair trade crafts and clothes well, support Marketplace: Handwork of India (marketplaceindia.org) which always needs interns and which supports the creativity of the artisans who are a part of every facet of the company and are in control of what they sell. Also, see Maya Works (mayaworks.org) and go to 10,000 Villages if you're in Chicago.
Ok that was long, but I thought the visits were fascinating so I'll keep my later entries shorter (I'll try my best).
Afoyo,
Nikolai "The Last Born" Anywar
