VOICE OF HUMANITY UGANDA

Attitude change

VOICE formed 12 working groups that meets every week among communities in 8 slums of Gulu Municipality to advocate for social inclusion and nondiscrimination against women, young girls who were sexually abused during war times, refugee families from South Sudan and DR Congo, other ethnic minorities, poor households, families affected by HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B virus, disabled persons and street children. In 2012, local communities tortured women-headed refugee families and burnt down scores of their grass thatched huts in Gulu Municipality, accusing them of witchcraft, spreading HIV/AIDS and breaking up marriages due to their sexual behaviour. VOICE campaigns for sustainable lifestyles which protect the environment for future benefits and mitigate against negative impact of climate change associated with the sprawling urbanization.

Communities are being changed to adopt positive attitudes towards each other, sanitary best-practices which reduce communicable diseases and waste management in slums. Alternative sources of livelihoods to promote family economic security to empower a family to afford at least a meal a day.

Literacy and Language coaching

VOICE conducts literacy and English language coaching to illiterate women and child-mothers whose education were disrupted by war, together with their children for purposes of promoting social intergration and increasing entrepreneurial skills in doing small scale businesses.  South Sudanese are Arabic-speaking; Congolese are French-speaking yet Ugandan host communities are English-speaking.

VOICE filled up 30 water-logged disused war-time pit latrines with murram soil, in 8 slum settlements in Gulu Municipality. Disused war-time pit latrines are breeding grounds for mosquitos that transmit malaria parasites to humans causing sickness. Wastes from disused pit latrines are washed by floods and deposited in open wells from where communities draw their drinking water, causing water-borne diseases. This was done with funds from The Netherlands Albert Schweitzer Foundation in 2017.

 VOICE rehabilitated pit latrines of 4 stances each and 3 sanitary urinals at Gulu Prison Primary School in 2017, with funding from The Netherlands Albert Schweitzer Foundation.

We are children from South Sudan.

The war in our home country is fatal situation for all of us. That’s way we are forced to come to Uganda. Each of us has experienced or seen really bad things. There are hardly any refugees of us who have lost family members through the war.

One day I will stop the war in South Sudan.

We need to understand each other. Every tribe in South Sudan is a part of my home county. We have to learn to see ourselves as a South Sudanese community. Education is so important for all of us. Going to school and learning will change everything.

I am a part of the project.

I am happy to get some help for myself and my family. We can talk in groups about our problems. It helps a lot to know, we are not alone with our problems. When the refugees arrive in Uganda, all of them are in a very bad condition. They are really hungry and very sick. They had a log, dangerous and exhausting journey before they arrive in Uganda. A lot of them die on the way. But some are so devitalized from escape, the die later in Uganda.