As you are aware, Uganda, one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to experience the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS which has left Over 1.5 million orphaned children since the epidemic began -- losing their mother or both parents to AIDS. And a result of this, Legacy for African Children International interventions are focused in two areas; education of orphans and other vulnerable children and improved household incomes for their families as entry points for other services. The basis of focusing on education is to give the children a better future.
Activities that help attract and retain vulnerable children in school are some of LACI’s interventions. These include the provision of scholastic materials and payment of school dues. For children who are out of school, vocational and skills training in areas such as carpentry, building, tailoring, crafts are provided.
LACI Programs
1. Family Empowerment Program
The husband is the traditional breadwinner in most African families of and therefore the impact of the husband's death on the family is devastating. The family losses financial security and sharp decline in living standard. The economic hardship is put on both the widow and her children in order to survive. Families are unable to absorb the expense of caring for another child. Many times, the widow whose husband has died of AIDS has no marketable skills. LACI assists caregivers and foster family siblings with practical skills to enable them to support themselves and care for their children. LACI provides startup equipment and funds to start small businesses. These efforts indirectly impact the lives of hundreds of children.
The Family Empowerment Program therefore seeks to address the needs of the family by getting the families involved in practical skills, such as raising and selling of goats for profit, knitting and making of African crafts to support their family and keep their children in school. You can sponsor a family with $300 USD to initiate a goat project for profit. This project provides start-up capital in the form of equipment and animals.
Child Sponsorship Program
The future, as we all know, is in our children and Uganda is among the African countries facing the loss of an entire generation of her people the consequences of which she may never recover. Therefore the future of these children is our heart beat and the Child Sponsorship Program is one of the most important aspects of our ministry. Child Sponsorship is a great way to help children in need. In return you can see the real impact that your support has made. These children receive not only an education but a safe mentoring atmosphere through school to help them grow and mature. For many Uganda children, the expense of the required uniform is enough to prevent them from attending school
If you sponsor through LACI you help us to provide a home and a new family for an orphan; you help give a future to a child without hope. Sponsor a child with LACI, and you will be helping orphaned or abandoned children to grow up in a family with a mother, brothers and sisters, and a home of their own. You will be able to write to them and learn how they grow up with love. You will also be helping us to help other orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children and their families in the local communities. For $25 a month you can help children who have nothing and no-one to have a future.
HIV/AIDS Prevention & Counseling Program
Uganda is at the heart of the sub-saharan HIV/AIDS pandemic. An estimated 25.4 million people are living with HIV and approximately 3.1 million new infections occurred in 2004. In 2004, an estimated 2.3 million people lost their lives to the disease. Uganda is home to more than 1 million AIDS orphans. Widowed mothers and elderly widowed grandmothers are the predominant heads of households. Ref:
www.unaids.org
HIV/AIDS results in a progressive depletion of the immune system leading to immune deficiency. The weakened immune system is vulnerable to secondary diseases. Access to medical care is nonexistent for many Ugandans where almost half the population lives in absolute poverty. Ref:
www.unicef.org
LACI operates a mobile clinic to provide limited services in 50 different villages. With the mobile clinic, LACI provides limited medical services, offers counseling, and provides home-based care for people suffering with HIV/AIDS. Rural areas are severely lacking in services and HIV/AIDS awareness. Nearly every family in the rural villages has a someone who is sick or has died from AIDS.
Education continues as a primary weapon in the fight against HIV/AIDS. LACI conducts rural HIV/AIDS awareness programs in the villages explaining what the disease is, dispelling myths, and teaching safe conduct.
Awareness programs are provided at the community level, to schools and institutions, and at the personal level with individual counseling and home visits. Music and dramas by people living with HIV/AIDS and educational films are used.
LACI also recruits and trains community-based representatives to continue the work in the villages. The local person continues the educational outreach. They follow-up with counseling and needs to those who HIV screenings return positive. They provide medical and counseling assistance to those with AIDS in their homes. Community–based representatives train relatives and friends in home-based care for those in the late stages of AIDS to administer the type of care.
Our HIV/AIDS Prevention & Counseling Program focuses on providing culturally sensitive methods of awareness and education with the goal of preventing transmission of the disease and seeks to offer assistance and encouragement to those infected with the virus. It is primarily divided into two sections that include education and outreach. The educational aspect of the program consists of teaching of the local communities about the prevention, transmission and reality of the HIV/AIDS virus. The training includes two weeks of daily classroom lessons in two-hour increments and a final two of field practice.
The outreach program is a support system for those with the HIV/AIDS virus. Each morning local staff volunteers visit the homes of those in need and assist with activities of daily living. This could include, help with the household duties such as clothes washing, cooking, carrying water, live stock care, etc. It may also include a friendly chat or word of encouragement.