Ms. Edith Wakumire of Uganda was one of five women honoured for poverty reduction work at the local community level during a United Nations Development Programme-sponsored awards ceremony on 16 October to commemorate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The other four winners of UNDP's global annual award were Miyasser Al-Saadi (Jordan), Fatima Bee (India), Sonia Beltré (Dominican Republic) and Nicole Rouvet (France).
The mission of the ministry is one of empowering the poor -- particularly girls and women. Drawing on her training as a teacher and AIDS counselor, Ms. Wakumire has led the organization in educating some 400 orphans and other needy children and in providing counseling, home-care and income-generating services to some 500 families affected by HIV/AIDS.
The education of orphans and other needy girls is a priority issue for the ministry, Ms. Wakumire told Africa Recovery, stressing the cultural barriers faced by girls in Uganda. She lamented that "they leave school early because they become sexually active at a young age and are forced to marry early. Often, in the process, they get AIDS. Our statistics show that six girls for every one boy between the ages of 15 and 19 in Uganda get AIDS."
The ministry recently launched a programme that helps foster parents and guardians start small, entrepreneurial projects to enable them eventually to pay the school fees of the children in their care. Ms. Wakumire summed up the merits of the programme as "helping foster parents/guardians take care of themselves and their children and possibly also helping the children participate in their own welfare. In many cases, the foster parents/guardians are HIV-infected or have AIDS. When they become sick or die, at least the children are able to continue the projects we helped fund."
The Uganda Women Concern Ministry is now looking for external sources to assist in raising money to help fund local women's entrepreneurial projects, Ms. Wakumire told Africa Recovery. She envisages a programme that provides small amounts of money on varying terms to women in three different "need" categories.
"We would start by giving seed money [grants to start small entrepreneurial projects] to women who have absolutely nothing," she said. "There would be no benefit in giving loans to these women as they would not have the means to pay the loans back. At a later time, women in this group could approach us for additional funds in the form of no-interest loans. The second group would be women who have already started small projects but have very little money. The programme would give no-interest loans with lengthy repayment periods to women in this group to enable them to earn enough profit to comfortably make repayments. Finally, we would give low-interest loans to relatively well-off women running small businesses." Ms. Wakumire added that the ministry also plans to provide training to women in all three categories on managing money and running small businesses.
However, Ms. Wakumire mentioned that her organization's plans to expand its programmes are hindered by a funding shortfall. "As an example of how we're affected by the shortage of funds, we've been forced to give two cows to a group of 30 women instead of 15 cows to 30 women," explained Ms. Wakumire. "Obviously, it's like scratching the tip of the iceberg."
Poverty eradication lags, says UNDPProgress in eradicating poverty "falls far short of what is needed," observes the UNDP report Overcoming Human Poverty. Meanwhile, the poorest fifth of the population have become poorer: their share of total income fell from 5.7 to 5.2 per cent in the last decade. The report, released on 16 October, is a mid-course follow-up to commitments made at the 1995 Copenhagen World Summit for Social Development, when 186 governments declared their determination to eliminate extreme poverty. While welcoming some signs of progress since 1995, the report notes that poverty has increased while resources have stagnated, at best. "Since the Social Summit we've seen the official development assistance go down every year," remarked Mr. James Gustave Speth, UNDP Administrator, at the launch of the report. "Even in the face of the emerging crisis in Asia, now spreading around the world, we don't see any increases." The report also finds that many countries have not fulfilled the 1995 summit pledge to set concrete, time-bound targets for poverty eradication. Only half of the 42 African countries in UNDP's survey have set such targets. This lack of progress is worrying, "especially when the countries failing to take action, or even set targets, are often the poorest," says UNDP. The report notes that income poverty -- the proportion of people earning less than $1 per day -- affects close to 40 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa. Human poverty, a measure based on health and education standards, is also widespread, with more than 30 per cent of sub-Saharan Africans not expected to live beyond 40. |
