Community Outreach
Our Community Outreach programme aims at identifying and assisting vulnerable families within the communities that we operate in. We work closely with local leaders to identify these families, and then CALM Africa field-workers and volunteers design individual interventions that will provide both immediate, essential relief as well as initiatives that will be sustainable and enable the family to regain self-sufficiency to ensure a secure and healthy future.

Our intervention packages follow a six-step process:
1. The provision of emergency survival packs to meet immediate needs
2. Teaching important life-skills so that child-headed households can begin to improve their standard of life
3. Setting up a safe home, ensuring access to clean drinking water and providing the basic requirements for a clean and healthy home
4. Helping children access primary, secondary and vocational education
5. Integrating the children back into the community and helping them find employment
6. Encouraging the children to participate in and contribute to community activities and issues

Once we have worked through this process with the family, we maintain regular contacts to monitor their progress and make adjustments to the plan if need be. If our intervention has been successful, the family will become self-reliant and should not require the ongoing supply of financial or other resources. But there are many other vulnerable families who still require our support, so our field workers begin the process again of working with local leaders to identify and assist another family – the cycle continues. he country, and now living in an urban internal depressed persons camp (IDP) in a slum area of Kampala.

Beads for Life Programme
Uganda’s recent history means there are stories of tragedy, poverty and abuse at every corner. The members of the Namuwongo Women’s Group are certainly no strangers to these heartbreaks. The group comprises of more than 70 women from various parts of Uganda, widowed and displaced following the troubles in Northern and Western areas of Uganda. The slum where they now reside with their families houses more than 200,000 people. Conditions are terrible and the women and children go without the most basic of services. While the lives of these women were severely and permanently affected by the war, they now come together with hope for the future, supported by CALM Africa, as they re-build their lives through the Beads for Life programme.

Through a detailed and quite remarkable process, the women make colourful beads from used paper calendars and use these beads to make jewellery which is sold within local markets, and internationally through volunteers. While the process is lengthy, the cost of production is low and the women are committed. By earning a modest, regular income they are able to provide for the future of their families by getting their children back into school, accessing medical care, maintaining a healthy diet and providing safe accommodation. While their lifestyle remains modest, The Beads for Life programme has greatly improved the lives of these women. In addition to the supply of materials and training, CALM Africa also provides basic education to the women of the Namuwongo group on HIV/AIDS awareness and the rights of the child.

HIV/AIDS Awareness Programme
While it is true that progress has been made in recent years, the HIV/AIDS epidemic remains one of the greatest challenges to the eradication of poverty, improving the lives of communities, and the economic development of the nations of East Africa. Among the educated, great progress has been made. Early diagnosis is essential and allows both the administration of medical treatment, and lifestyle adjustments to ensure the disease is not passed on to others. But within poorer, less educated areas where the disease is more prevalent and the chances of contraction are high, awareness is low and the epidemic continues to gain momentum. It is essential to improve education and increase awareness on the ways that HIV/AIDS can be contracted, spread, diagnosed and treated.

To help address some of these issues, CALM Africa hosts workshops and training programmes targeting different groups within communities. Medical workshops, for instance, help teach members of the local communities how to protect themselves from contracting the disease, while training local health practitioners on safety measures to control the spread of the disease is also essential. Research shows that the disease is often transmitted through the use of dirty, infected syringes by traditional healers within communities. CALM therefore targets these healers and trains them on the basic facts of transmission of HIV/AIDS and the use of basic sanitation methods within their clinics.

Public Policy in Uganda and across Africa also needs to reflect the issues relating to the transmission of HIV/AIDS. CALM Africa works with local politicians to provide them with up-to-date community information, as well as training to enable them to design public policy to support people living with the virus and to combat some of the stigmatism often experienced by a sufferer. Issues relating to HIV/AIDS also form a significant part of CALM Africa’s lobbying programme. At the most basic level, all communities should have access to tests to detect the virus and suffers should have automatic access to the most up-to-date medical treatment. But HIV/AIDS sufferers and their families should also have access to counselling and other psychological support. Where it is likely that a woman is to be widowed to the disease, intervention plans should be made and implemented early to ensure she is able to provide her husband with care and will be self-sufficient upon his passing.

And importantly, lobbying on issues of HIV/AIDS also includes training woman leaders and young woman to advocate for their rights. Efforts to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS will be wasted, until women are empowered to make their own decisions and the options available to young women, in particular, are broadened through education.

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