Healing and Resilience Training (HART) Uganda for Young Mothers

An Educational Program titled Enhancing Livelihoods of Teenage Pregnant Girls, Adolescent Mothers and Young Women in Northern Uganda

What is our Story?

The Situation: Girls and young women in Northern Uganda have trailed for years in educational training and test scores; poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment all contribute to these systemic challenges. Teenage pregnancy—and the educational disparities and unemployment that results—contributes to these challenging conditions, resulting in an intergenerational cycle of hardship.

The Challenge: Despite efforts to better the conditions for young people’s education, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in new challenges for adolescent girls and women in Uganda.

Since schools initially shut down due to Covid-19, over 17,000 girls in Northern Uganda have become pregnant. Many boys, also already struggling, have become discouraged about returning to school. And in the worst cases, due to the financial struggles of the pandemic, some young women have been pushed into early marriage in exchange for a bride price for their families. Early marriages such as these push young people into parenthood too early and result in school dropouts, failed relationships, and single parenting in already difficult conditions.

The Plan: We at World Action Fund (WAF) understand that we must meet this unprecedented challenge for young people and new families in Uganda with unprecedented energy for creating positive change.

We know that young women are strong and resilient. We know that these hardships will require them to catch up quickly to acquire the skills they need to survive in the short term and to contribute to a transformation of culture in the long term.

We know that young women are central to the well-being of their households and to their community. These pressures mean young women need additional support to have the best outcomes.

To help these young women, WAF members have designed and proposed innovative training programs that are aimed at launching girls and young women into attainable employment opportunities where they can grow and be promoted over time, developing additional skills to provide stable income over time.

We know that technical skills alone don’t respond to the needs of Uganda’s young women.

Ugandan women and families need these changes to last.

Our program will help provide support for the vulnerabilities that prevent these girls from getting jobs in the first place.

These trainings focus on healing and resilience. They offer networks of social support and positive role models, they will use gender-friendly curricula to share lessons in technical and financial literacy, and they will use safe and gender-friendly technical training spaces and the introduction of peer support through the formation of cooperatives and lifelong learning with appropriate tools. The end of training will be marked with an opportunity to display skills and connect with potential employers. Training will also involve WAF’s collaboration and partnership with other groups providing transformational interventions to young people in the region.

The Hope: We hope you share our vision for healing and helping young women in Uganda develop the resources they need to live healthy and safe lives with their children. Let’s work together to support the resilience of young women in Uganda, and to give that resilience a chance to shine with education and support.

We hope you will share the love we have for the young families of Uganda. We hope that you will show that love by helping us empower and equip young mothers with the skills they need to support their families and to thrive personally.

Join us in our mission to change the path of this pandemic.

Share our Hope for Uganda.

Donate, share this link, and post #HARTUganda #<3Uganda