Kigezi orphans project
 

Kigezi orphans project

Kigezi orphans project, is located in south western  Uganda ,with its head office in KABALE town along KABALE-Kisoro Road ,Plot 142/144 Kigezi Tumuke House.2nd floor. The orphanage school is located 43 Kilometers from the Head office in village of Katojo Rutenga sub county at the boarder of Kanungu ,Rukungiri ,and KABALE Districts

Kigezi orphans:

Background
Kigezi Home of Orphans Project is a charitable community based organization operating in Katojo Parish, Rutenga Sub County, Kanungu District, Uganda, and East Africa. It has a field office in its area of operation and a regional office in Kigezi Twimukye Building, second floor Room 9 located on Plot 142/144, Kabale Town along Kabale-Kisoro road Uganda.

It was founded in 2010 with the overall goal of caring for  the orphans through counseling, provision of educational services, supporting agriculture, HIV testing and enabling access to ARVs of the infected orphans and guardians. The founder is a native of the project area of operation, was touched by the lives of the increasing number of orphans most of whom are losing their parents to HIV/AIDS, poor health conditions they are living in their communities. In addition to lack of parental care and love, some of these young children (orphans) would be left out when they are also HIV positive in an area where health care services are very low and demanding.

Majority of the orphans were marginalized, lacked basic needs of life and the HIV positive ones were stigmatized by the community members. This led to a high rate of school dropouts, unwanted pregnancies, early marriages and increase in the rate of crimes such as murder, robbery, theft and prostitution as well as low level of education, hence  most of them continued to lose hope. The future of most of the orphaned and vulnerable children appeared doomed which influenced the founder of this organization to form a group that would collectively be in position to assist them where possible.

As a starting point, the founder organized a team which sensitized the community members and provided guidance and counseling to the orphans and their guardians. Today, the project has 409 beneficiaries (orphans) and there is a plan and need to expand it to other areas within the region and entire communities.
Politically, the project is located at the basement of Local government level (LC1) which is Nyamirengyere Cell, Katojo Parish Rutenga Sub-county. The beneficiaries, children, are from the local communities around. In addition to that the School project which as an orphanage is non partisan.

The school project economically is being helped by local communities who are beneficiaries contributing small amounts of money and the remaining support is from friends and well wishers from United States of America.

Religiously, the orphanage Project favors and welcomes all the religious denominations these are Catholics, Protestants, and Moslems, Orthodox, SDA and many others. This has helped the project to maintain peace, justice, order and development.

The orphanage project is in Kigezi region that comprises of Rukiga-Runyankole as cultures. Therefore, the child at school, their mother language is Rukiga Runyankore following their Traditional Cultural behavior of Rukiga-Runyankole.

Therefore, the founder made sure that the project is owned by the beneficiaries (orphans) and their guardians who have eased its organization and management.

1.2 Service offered by the project
The project offers a number of services in order to meet difficult needs and requirements of its beneficiaries. These are:

Education for both nursery and primary levels,
Educating orphans on dangers of HIV/ AIDS;
Provision of guidance and counseling services;
Encouraging self reliance to orphans;
Developing orphans economically and socially,
Increasing access to basic education through provision of scholastic materials.

1.3 Mission of the project
The mission of the project is to continuously provide basic needs, moral support, rights and guidance to orphaned and vulnerable children within its area of operation.

1.4 Vision of the project
The vision of the project is to become a leading orphanage project within the region enabling orphaned children to develop into good mannered self reliant individuals.