By Godwin Abedican

Arua

With continuous calls for support towards persons with disability, the women inclusive, women with disabilities in Arua district are set to benefit from a 3 months project.

The project will be implemented by Upendo Ni Baraka-Uganda (UNBU) a non-profit organization that promotes and protects the rights of Women with Disabilities. Upendo Ni Baraka-Uganda was officially launched on Thursday 19^th October 2023 as a local community based organisation.

UNBU, currently operates in Arua District and plans to expand to three more districts of Yumbe, Maracha and Terego in the near future.
The organisation comes with its first project,  a three (3) months project named, “Influencing the District council to prioritize WWDs’ issues into District development plan, which project runs effective this month until  31^st .Dec. 2023,” with funding from urgent action fund Africa for women’s human rights worth nine thousand nine hundred seventy one (9,971) US Dollars.

In her opening remarks at Rose Villa hotel in Arua city, Betty Wuzu, the Executive director Upendo Ni Baraka-Uganda says the organization shall use the tool of inclusivity at all levels of its project implementations starting with the immediate one. “Creating an inclusive community is what we would really want to do and I want to believe that everyone would want to do the same. As Upendo Ni Baraka, we are more of inclusiveness than working alone. 

We are not going to work alone, we need to work as a group and as a team so that we can achieve something that is desirable for everybody in the nation,” Wuzu said.

  
Betty Wuzu, the UNBU ED making her opening remarks at the inception meeting

Peace Agnes Drateru, who represented the board of Upendo Ni Baraka-Uganda during the project and organisation launch says, due to generalization of persons with disability, the services meant for them eventually do not reach them as desired by the implementing partners. “As Upendo Ni Baraka, we realise that having a platform or creating a platform is really very key. The girl child and women with disability have very many different challenges. You can mention issues to do with sexual harassment and even denial of sexual rights but many times we just handle it like these are people with disabilities, we do not specify a lady or woman with disability and we have failed to pick their challenges one by one making it hard for projects targeting them to succeed.”

Meanwhile according to Jean Longo Ayikoru, the community development officer in charge of disability and elderly Arua district, calls upon partners to learn to give priority to persons with disability in their projects

Uganda government adopted the UN General Assembly Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for People with Disabilities in 1993 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Peoples with Disabilities (UNCRPD) was then adopted in 2008.

Jenna Sitaraya the CDO Logiri Sub County says this project comes timely to help the women especially at grassroots

While commissioning the organizations and closing the inception meeting for the project, Geoffrey Okiswa the Resident district commissioner Arua appreciated the efforts the organizations has come up with to complement what the government is doing. “The government believes in structural development that when we have one war, and the war is about social economic transformation and development, we can have many partners to fight that war.

If we can aggregate this project plan to other smaller units like where we have persons with disability, now we have women with disability, let us even have the one of men with disability and let us also have the one of children with disability. This way we shall be able to achieve our project targets and all together bring on board the marginalized groups especially those with disability,” Okiswa appealed.


Geoffrey Okiswa the Resident district commissioner Arua speaking at the closure of the project inception

The “Influencing the District council to prioritize WWDs’ issues into District development plan Project will have activities such as Conducting a mapping of WWDs including NGOs, CBOs, and other stakeholders to generate a baseline and catalogue on WWDs and support organizations, Collaborate with the office of PWDs and the Elderly to sensitize the community on rights of WWDs  and raise awareness on access to social services for WWDs with Specific objectives to profile, map, and generate a catalogue of key actors for evidence-based inclusive and collaborative programming in interventions for WWDs, To improve knowledge and enhance meaningful participation of WWDs in the local government development planning process thus promoting and nurturing a culture of inclusive governance in Arua District by February 2024.

COVER PHOTO: Geoffrey Okiswa, the Arua RDC signs the organisation board to officially launch the organisation By Godwin Abedican