OUTLINE OF KAGADI-KIBAALE HOLISTIC TRANSFROMATION UNDER VCDF PROGRAMS
Historical perspective:
VCDF is a registered Community Based Organization (CBO) which engages families and small-holder farmer groups and facilitates micro-enterprise development in Kagadi District, in Uganda to effect transformative. It also engineers community-led change at the grassroots by employing the Participatory Rural Appraisal Approach (PRA). Fundamentally, the goal is to cause change so that the positive change de-escalates high children vulnerability and eventually, ensure the “index” vulnerable child’s risk of abuse whether physical or psychological tends to zero. VCDF is actively operational in Kagadi District although by law, its catchment area covers Greater Kibaale; a geographical rural enclave with an estimated total population well above 1,137,778people (UBOS, June 2024).
As it is with the national demographics, the percentage of the population below 18 years which constitutes the childhood age is about 50.1% while the percentage below 14 years drops to approximately 44.6% (Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2024).
It is also estimated that 55% of children between 0-4 years live in poverty and 24% or 1 child in 4 lives in extreme poverty. 31% of children aged 6 to 17 in Uganda live in poverty (Dr. Ian Milligan, 2016) (UNICEF, 2019)and 18% live in extreme poverty in Kagadi.
According to a baseline survey conducted by VCDF social work desk in January 2021, for a livelihood, 92.7 % of the population in VCDF’s catchment area is still trapped in peasant agriculture as approximately 29.3% of persons in this population live on less than a dollar per day: having only a single, non-balanced meal per day especially when the weather patterns are not favorable.
The segment of the population considered to live in abject poverty is about 19%.
In totality, this makes a substantial percentage of the children of approximately 54% in which about 24.4% are single orphaned or total orphans to live in a highly insecure child care polity susceptible to abuse and denial of rights.
Therefore, VCDF’s Core area of intervention is Child Care and Protection while the penetration point is empowerment of families for a better lifestyle through micro-enterprise development for individual families or groups for complete livelihood transformation.
Consequently, Agriculture and other enterprises development is prioritized because for effective child care and protection, natural families (Both biological and foster families) must be sufficiently empowered in respect of income thus, sufficient basics of well-balance and nutritional food, appropriate shelter, adequate clothing, tuition for school going age, medical care and security.
Since individual family food security and income situates Child vulnerability: ordinarily lowering vulnerability when there is food security plus a sufficient/disposal income and in contrast, increasing vulnerability when there is food insecurity and virtually no income at all or the income being petty, VCDF automatically attempts to address family/Household incomes and food security.