CRED Foundation has recently awarded ILA Uganda with a three months “Education 4 All” grant to support sustainable life skills among refugee youths in Palabek Refugee Settlement in Lamwo district. An assessment of potential beneficiaries has been done and four candidates have been identified with two coming from the settlement and host community respectively.
Here below are two of the enrolled beneficiaries for the CRED Education 4 All grant support. The other two will follow next week.
Phillip is a 24 year old boy who relocated to Uganda with his mother and five siblings in 2017 as a refugee from South Sudan. He is living with a divorced and sickly suicidal mother who is addicted to alcohol and unable to work to make a living. The entire family depends on Phillip and a younger brother and their meager food ratio provided by the World Food Program (WFP) which makes him work tirelessly to provide for the family. He desires gaining sustainable practical skills like in mechanics or hairdressing which if he completes will enable him establish his own business to earn a living and provide for his family including the mother’s medical bills and fees for the younger siblings.
Philips believes obtaining vocational skills will equip him to make a living and enable him take care of his single and sickly mother plus the rest of the family. He is now undertaking Hairdressing as his choice believing that once he completes he can establish a saloon from where he will earn money to take care of his family.
Evelyn is a 26 year old girl living with her alcoholic parents in Lamwo coomunity village. She dropped out of school while in primary six because the parents could not pay her in school and expected her to be at home cooking food for them. She got pregnant for a man with whom they have two children together though not living together now. The family wrote to the man’s family to pay dowry if he is to take their daughter or else they take her back home. The man failed to pay the dowry and her family took her back home, and the husband has not followed her five years down the road!
She cannot go to the man’s place against her parents’ wish so she is struggling with her two children while doing garden work and brewing alcohol to make a living. She believes with vocational skills lime tailoring will enable her to earn a living and she will be able to pay her children in school while meeting other basics needs. She is happily doing tailoring course to gain the skills needed.