By Joseph Abiria

Arua City

Community Empowerment For Rural Development (CEFORD) in partnership with the Agakhan Foundation are implementing a project that aspires to improve livelihoods of women and vulnerable girls through skills trainings. 

The Skill up Women and Girls for Social Economic Transformation project (SWEET) targets to empower girls to become economically independent and reduce on the syndromes of begging for handouts.  The project has got components that meet demands of the market.

Speaking to community members during a media engagement at Onzivu ward, the mayor of Ayivu division Malon Avutia suggested that the vulnerable categories of women and girls should be given a chance to benefit from government programs such as PDM. “Actually my recommendation is these girls who have been trained should be enrolled in PDM so that they can benefit from the 1 million shillings straight and start under taking some businesses for their survival because many of them are pregnant, others have just delivered and many of them are impatient, you can read in some of their faces that in the next two years they will get married, the mayor emphasized”


Community members attending a meeting in Ragem cell

The young girls and women that CEFORD is training are in the final stages of completing their various short courses and as such Miriam Sida, the village health coordinator of onzivu ward says that the girls need to be supported so that they come out of poverty and its associated barriers. “We have around 55 young girls who are getting these skills, one of them is hair dressing, tailoring, mechanics, shoe repair and catering and in all these projects the girls are doing very well,” she explained.

But Frida Lekuru, the gender transformation officer of CEFORD responded that her organization has taken up the matter and promised to help  some of the   girls and women with startup kits so that they are able to survive on their own after under taking  their trainings. “Out of the 200 youths we have skilled 150 are supposed to get the startup kit, but in onzivu ward we skilled 50 meaning that out of 50, 40 will qualify, but we encourage them to do business plan so that all of them benefit from the kits,” she noted.

The SWEET Project commenced at the beginning of this year and is expected to run through 2025

COVER PHOTO: (L)Malon Avutia Mayor Ayivu Division With other stakeholders By Joseph Abiria