Title: Addressing Social Economic challenges and potential of vulnerable household opportunities to provide care and support to OVC in Uganda
Author: John Kikanu Byarugaba,

Background
Much as conflicts, wars and drought have been responsible for the increase in number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), HIV/AIDS has highly contributed to this increase. In Uganda, the standard definition of an orphan is a child who is below 18 years and who has lost one or both parents. Current estimates put the number of orphans in Uganda at 20% of all the children below 15 years of age. With the increase in HIV/AIDS prevalence, the number of orphans has increased sharply than before and it is projected to increase further.

OVC households that are affected by HIV/AIDS are also faced with the prospect of accommodating more dependents (orphans). In order to cope with this situation, OVC care takers has resorted to growing less labour intensive crops (e.g. maize and cassava), reduced consumption (especially food), postpone responding to or paying for non-emergency needs, removing the children from school to contribute to household labour pool and sell off productive assets such as land, and also shifted the care of children to other relatives or friends.

Objectives
In order to address the above challenges, IRCU implemented OVC care takers training program on social-economic strengthening that will enable OVC and their household to sustain their livelihood which will help them attain a right of every child to a standard of living adequate for his/her physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.
Specific objectives
1. Train OVC and their caregivers to improve and maintain income flows to their households.
2. Enhance OVC caregivers small businesses to improve on their profitability.
3. Initiate and where possible strengthen market linkages with private sector players for sustainable enterprise growth and development.
Implementation Approach
The approach used was highly participatory to allow lively debate and exchange of ideas among participants. A lot of real life examples reflecting the participants’ situation were used. The target participants in this training were that at least 60% of the participants to be female because of their roles in caring and supporting OVC.
The training package that was carried out was Grassroots Management Training (GMT). GMT was designed to equip those wanting to set a small business or those already in some form of business. It was mainly designed for those engaged in farming as a business (FaaB), simple manufacturing, mechanics, workshop owners, tailors, hand crafts makers, traders etc at the grass root level meaning that the required educational level of the participants was not an issue.
The method of delivery for the GMT training was participatory and considered a lot of adult learning didactics which included among others;
a) Presentations: Presentations were used by the trainers with use of flip charts and black boards to introduce the various sessions.
b) Discussions: Following each presentation, participants were allowed to interact and discuss in plenary on matters arising, which enabled them to share experiences and to get more clarification.
c) Group work: This was done to enable participants to have more interactions in their groups of interests, discuss and analyze the best practices, challenges, opportunities facing their various businesses.
d) Role-plays: This was done to emphasize specific issues of the sessions e.g. marketing, separating business from family and to show the importance of keeping records in a business.
e) The Business Game: This was to take the participants through a hypothetical business scenario and analyze the basic steps of planning for a business.
f) Mini exhibitions: These were organized to initiate and develop market linkages for the participants. Private sector players willing to buy products from the participants were invited to participate in the exhibition.
g) Guest presentations: In some training, where possible, model small businesses people were invited to give presentations on how they have been successfully to be able to inspire and motivate the participants.
Results
By the end of the financial year 2008 IRCU was able to train 5,973 OVC care takers in social economic strengthening. Of these, 4,381 were females while 1,592 were males. These trained care takers are providing care and support to 11,196 OVC, of these, 6071 are females and 5125 are males. In order to measure the impact of this socio economic strengthening training program and to measure the effectiveness in meeting the needs of OVC and their caregivers, IRCU decided to carry out an evaluation to measure the impact. The results from this evaluation indicated that:
Numerous micro financing programs that exist in districts provided start up capital for small business enterprises. While the availability of funds may not be an issue, access to it due to the requirements hindered the access to it. Of the all the care givers trained, 83% reported that they are getting profit of Uganda shillings, between 50,000-100,000 per month from the businesses they started after training.
Conclusions
At the end of the training, it was found that both business and Family should be treated as distinct entities. However they realized that the business owner has dual responsibility to manage the two i.e. business and family.
It was found that it is important to undertake research on what kind of business (products/services) you may need in order to decide on the type of business that will have ready market and sources of materials readily available.
It was appreciated that most small business people copy prices ad yet they do not cost their inputs that make the product or service. Therefore, costing and pricing was seen as key factors to selling
Record keeping was seen as another fundamental aspect of good business practice and it can improve the business. Records keeping were emphasized because of its importance especially in remembering debtors, creditors, sales expenses, loans and grants
Use of existing micro finance institutions can help the small enterprises to access credit for start up and or working capital and also appreciated the importance of Village Savings and Loan Associations.
Challenges
 In some of the communities, not many potential markets were identified hence few market linkage opportunities. This was mainly in the very rural areas.
 Linking the participants to micro finance institutions in some of the areas became difficult mainly because of their history of cheating people.
 Lack of adequate land for agricultural production especially OVC care givers who are based in slum areas.
 The inability to maintain the increasing number of OVC in the household extended family.
 Some of the OVC care givers are engaged in agriculture related activities but mainly for subsistence and yet training focused on commercialization.
Recommendations
Although the OVC caregivers demonstrated some successes in initiating income generating activities, they were found to have little information on various markets due to lack of information. Future capacity building/training programs should attempt to provide such and other related information. Viable IGAs should be identified based on group needs and strengths and assisted in identifying available market.
Networking with key government programs such as National Agricultural Advisory Development Services (NAADS) is still limited and should be emphasized in future training design. This will reduce dependency on IRCU in terms of capacity building; promote a culture of shared responsibility with the government hence addressing the long terms needs of OVC and their caregivers.
Group formation was a key aspect during the training, however some caregivers were found to be conducting business on an individual basis. This resulted in low bargaining power, low income hence unable to adequately solve their needs. There is a need to strongly promote group based enterprises and tap into available markets
It was also established that group formation does not follow any geographical pattern. As a result, members spread within a sub-county which makes coordination and mobilization difficult. Groups should be formed at certain administrative structures of the district such as parish to promote cohesion and trust among members.
As a follow up on the Social economic strengthening training, OVC care givers need to source for other NGO support agencies who would build their capacity in cross-cutting issues i.e. gender, youth, the land less etc. A case in example is many of the women trained said that their husbands take the largest share of the income from the businesses. So training in gender rights would go a long way in mitigating this problem.