Projects

Launched in 2018, Youth Empowerment Scholarship (YES) is a refugee educational program of the Young Adult Empowerment Initiative (YEI), that pays tuitions for unaccompanied South Sudanese refugee children in Uganda Settlements, who demonstrate academic excellence but cannot be in the classrooms due to lack of financial support. Our preliminary assessments in settlements in Uganda indicate that every at least 2 out of 5 children who are not attending school are either unaccompanied minors or orphans. They are subject to physical hard labour i.e cultivating family’s crop-farm, fetching water from several miles-away boreholes and collecting firewood from unsafe bushes. The girl child is particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, and forced and early marriage. The program mobilizes funds to send them to school where they can be protected from physical abuses, while getting psychological support and pursuing their dreams at the same time. Our five year goal is to at least sponsor 50 unprivileged children with an annual target of 10.

When the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Uganda in March, there were fears and panics that it could have devastating effects on the refugees. Bweyale camp, in Kiryandongo is highly congested, making physical and social-distancing nearly impossible, yet refugees have limited access to PPEs, water and soaps required in hand washing to prevent the spread of the virus. The UN’s World Food Program announced a 30 percent cut on refugee rations i.e from 12kg of maize flour per month to just 8, amidst a countrywide imposed lockdown – leading to serious lack of food for the refugees.

This project intends to provide face masks, hand washing soaps, detergents to refugees, refugees’ essential workers, community mobilizers and educators. It also involves awareness-raising campaigns and translation of COVID-19 IEC material in local languages to stamp out widespread misinformation. We also want to distribute food to vulnerable groups such as expectancy mothers, under-five children and elder people who easily get malnourished and can die due to starvation. Refugees need access to economic opportunities so that they can generate incomes to feed their families. Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Uganda is a home to over 60,000 refugees from Burundi, DR Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, and South Sudan.