Areas of Operation
The dropout rates for children and youths especially between the age of 13 – 20 years is relatively high in the Busoga region, a devastating situation which has often times had severe impact on the lives of these youths. Some of them have from time to time ended up in drug abuse or even theft at worst. With this continuous struggle in their lives, youths need a hand that can support and empower them to become financially self-sustaining.
The project is aiming at providing women and youths with sustainable skills and empowerment to enable them to access basic reliable skills through training workshops, counseling and promote positive behaviors. Currently, women and young people country-wide are vulnerable to many dangers because of dropping out of school and high levels of unemployment.
B. Health Program
Since its founding, Empowering Hands Initiative has emphasized community-based, primary health care approaches spanning interventions such as: training community health workers; Child Survival programs; malaria control; vaccination campaigns; strengthening of health management systems; construction and rehabilitation of rural health posts; and others. Fighting the current HIV/AIDS pandemic is currently Empowering Hands Initiative’s overarching priority. EHI intends to carry out a number of stand-alone projects in that regard, focusing on containing spread of the disease, and including interventions such as IEC - Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaigns; BCC – Behavioral Change Campaigns; voluntary counseling and testing initiatives (VCT); home-based care and some treatment programs. We also intend to sensitize mothers about Nutrition and Early Childhood Care and Development.
Reproductive Health Among the many benefits of reproductive health are improving family and community well-being, boosting economic gains, saving women's and children's lives, and greatly curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS – benefits that go a long way in helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. EHi therefore looks forward to sensitizing the youths and community at large about reproductive health issue such as; adolescent health, maternal health, contraception, sexually transmitted infection, abortion and child and forced marriage. Our approach is holistic and we try to integrate HIV/AIDS components into all of our programs.
C. Agriculture and Food Security
Empowering Hands Initiative’s agricultural programs respond to the needs of the community farmers, enabling them to improve their skills and increase their productivity through access to information and modern farming practices. Our priorities focus on crop productivity, diversification, food processing and marketing as a means to increase household food security and raise household incomes. We also seek to promote enhanced family nutrition. Projects provide: capacity building and organizational formation; small-scale business training; improved seeds and tools; training in improved production techniques, post-harvest storage and food processing; and nutrition training. We also look forward to providing farmers with enhanced local, cross-border and international market linkages. Empowering Hands Initiative will traditionally work with farmer groups, especially women’s groups.
Empowering Hands Initiative’s education program will include construction and equipment of primary and vocational education institutions; as well as providing opportunities, especially for the disadvantaged adolescent youths to access education and training programs at established and partner institutions with a view to improving their livelihoods. In addition, there will be a focus on basic literacy and numeracy training, especially for the girl child, in an effort to reinforce their capacity to become more active and productive agents in their communities. EHI will also direct emphasis to overcoming menstrual management challenges especially among the school going girls.
Accelerated Education Programme (AEP) EHi looks forward to providing is a flexible, age-appropriate programme that promotes access to education in an accelerated time-frame for disadvantaged groups, over-age out-of-school children and youth who missed out or had their education interrupted due to poverty, marginalization, conflict and crisis.
Youths Centered Work Readiness/Soft
skills and other services
Empowering Hands Initiative looks forward to offering a number of youth Youths centered work readiness/soft skills need in today's workforce which include; leadership skills - companies want employees who can supervise and direct other workers, teamwork, communication skills, problem-solving skills, work ethic, flexibility/adaptability and interpersonal skills.
Essential Life Skills taken care of at EHi among youths include; Communication and interpersonal skills, Decision-making and problem-solving, Creative thinking and critical thinking, Self-awareness and empathy, which are two key parts of emotional intelligence, Assertiveness and equanimity, or self-control.
Other skills include entrepreneurial skills and financial literacy, technical skills, mentoring groups, youth leaderships groups, after school programs, and recreational programs such as drama and sports.
E. Environmental Conservation Program
Empowering Hands Initiative looks forward to protect and conserve the environment especially within the context of its agricultural programs. Reforestation, soil restoration and conservation, land reclamation, tree planting and agro-forestry are some of the interventions Empowering Hands Initiative intends to undertake to preserve Jinja’s land and water resources. Empowering Hands Initiative will consistently worked with communities to instill greater understanding of the long-term, potentially negative consequences of environmental degradation and to engage them in sustainable natural resource management programs.
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