Elgon Girl Foundation
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The EGF Program combines concepts of corporate social responsibility, community service, and youth empowerment by focusing on engaging women leaders to give back to the youth through the investment of intellectual and financial resources. At EGF, we understand that role models are key motivators for progress. As such, we regularly seek out successful women with motivating and instructive backgrounds to bring them to various girls clubs, where they share their experiences, offer support, and inspire and encourage ambitious girls.
Are you a woman who has overcome challenges in your life? Would you like to support girls in Empowerment Clubs as a mentor or visit clubs to inspire girls with your life story? Are you a successful woman who wants to give back to vulnerable girls? We would love to engage you as a member of our Women Role Models Program! Please email us at Support@elgongirlfoundation.org.ug and we will talk to you about how you can get involved!
The Girls at Risk Program is designed to offer relief and support services to girls who have experienced emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. We provide individual and group counseling, emergency planning, and information and referral services to girls who have experienced defilement, atrocities in BUDUDA, physical violence, sexual assault, and torture.
Our staff is trained to support girls who have experienced abuse, as well as helping girls at risk of abuse to find safe alternatives. In situations where survivors need specialized services to secure healing and justice, we make referrals to our partners in the legal and medical field. The Girls at Risk Program currently gives hope and rehabilitation to more than 10 girls around the BUDUDA – and counting!
The Opportunity Program provides VSLA - Village Saving and Loan Association training, start-up kits, and micro-loans to girls who have no means to earn a living. Clubs maintain 100% of the management of their VSLAs. All clubs are trained under this program to increase girls’ financial management skills. EGF has trained more than 30 girls and assisted many of them in their own small businesses.
Village Saving and Loan Association is an effective method of helping poor communities to mobilize funds to support their small businesses and also a decisive factor in eliminating poverty. And its main reason is to provide simple savings in the communities that does not have access to formal financial services. Each EGF VSLA consists of 25 to 30 members bringing the total number of ladies to 120. EGF currently has 4 VSLA groups running in Nakatsi, Bushika, Bunabutiti and Nangako town council.
Elgon Girl Foundation (EGF) launched the Social Media Ambassadors Project with the objective of helping young girls understand how they can leverage social media in raising their issues while creating prevention strategies for young girls to protect themselves from any form of cyber harassment and develop cyber-risk management strategies so as to foster better digital experiences. There will be 2 cohorts of 15 girls each. These Ambassadors will represent schools in various sub-Counties in Bududa.
The Ambassadors will receive training and mentorship form EGF and its partners and they will go and lead initiatives in their own school clubs to create the effect of mentoring more students. The objective of this project is to ensure that over 1,000 girls in the school clubs understand the basic principles of digital technology and have the ability to run campaigns and prevent or respond to digital attacks/incidents.
'Protecting Adolescents from Gender-Based Violence through the Campaign of their Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights’ EGF started the program in 2017 that aims to raise awareness and enhance protection of children, adolescents and young women (10-17 years old) in the Elgon region from gender-based violence (early marriage, FGM and sexual abuse) through promoting their right to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) in six target Districts of Elgon Region: Bududa, Manafwa, Namisidwa, Mbale, Sironko, and Bulambuli. “Children and Adolescents Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights. Increase awareness of the importance of sex and reproductive education for adolescents and young women by linking it to the rights of the child;
Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) refers to any act that is committed against a person's will and is based on gender norms and unequal power relationships. It includes physical, emotional or psychological and sexual violence, and denial of resources or access to services. Violence includes threats of violence and coercion. SGBV inflicts harm on women, girls, men and boys and is a severe violation of several human rights.
Persons of concern are often at heightened risk of SGBV during emergencies. This can be due to a number of factors, including the sudden breakdown of family and community structures after forced displacement. Certain groups in a population may be particularly at risk of SGBV: older persons, persons with disabilities, adolescents, children, Young women who are female heads of household.
We aim at Promoting menstrual hygiene. It is a normal human tendency to ‘run for your life’ when danger occurs. Adolescent girls and women at a reproductive age fail to manage their menstruation periods due to lack of gender sensitivity and affordability of sanitary towels which is a big problem to girls and young women in the rural areas.
“Menstruation as a taboo” Women's rights to reproductive health has been repeated by the United Nations as an individual human right’s issue. Although various policies and programmes have been implemented with regard to menstrual hygiene, it is still regarded as a cultural taboo in Uganda. Today there are places where silence, shame and stigma surround menstruation and menstrual hygiene suggesting a need for social change and further attention at political level. Menstruation is considered as dirty by many Ugandans, resulting in women being isolated and Prohibited from carrying out rituals (entering temples, attending auspicious occasion) and for the school going girls it has made them fail to attend school for three to five days every month which leads to poor performance also even school drop outs. Elgon Girl Foundation has involved in the training girls at school level, and community people (women and men) in the training of making reusable sanitary towels through local materials available and affordable. By doing this many girls are kept in schools because they can make their own pads using the local materials around them and easy to use.
Currently, Elgon Girl Foundation is working with concerned persons who support her program activities.
We hope to engage local and International organizations or agencies with the same objectives to achieve the goals EGF to support the activities.
Elgon Girl Foundation supports interactive process with communities (as integrated with an overall program) to develop tailored messages and approaches using a variety of communication channels to develop positive behaviors; promote and sustain individual, community and societal behavior change; and maintain appropriate behavior.
Adolescence (10-19 years) is a phase of physical growth and development accompanied by sexual maturation, often leading to intimate relationships. Adolescent HIV/AIDS is a separate epidemic and needs to be handled and managed separately from adult HIV. The adolescents can be subdivided into student, slum and street youth; street adolescents being most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS.
Among various risk factors and situations for adolescents contracting HIV virus are adolescent sex workers, child trafficking, child labor, migrant population, childhood sexual abuse, coercive sex with an older person and biologic (immature reproductive tract) as well as psychological vulnerability. The most common mode of transmission in youth in the Elgon Region Districts; cross generational sex, prostitution, among others.
The disclosure and declaration of HIV status to self and family is challenging and guilt in sexually infected adolescents and tendency to blame parents if vertically affected need special consideration and proper counseling. EGF works together with the community, area counselors attached to the nearest health facility to identify the HIV infected persons who have not yet started drugs or Treatment related issues revolve around the when and what of initiation of ART; the choice of antiretroviral and their dosages; issues related to long term ADRs; sense of disinhibition following ART commencement; adherence and resistance.
• To protect displaced women, girls, men and boys against SGBV at all times and in all locations, including in the home, school and work, in public places, on public transport, and at aid distribution points.
• To ensure that SGBV survivors can confidentially report incidents and have timely and non-discriminatory access to services and support, including medical, psychosocial, legal and material assistance, as well as safe spaces where needed.
• To address the specific protection needs of persons at high risk of SGBV (including older persons, persons with disabilities, adolescent girls, children, and female heads of household) and take them into account in all programming.
• To ensure that SGBV survivors can seek a judicial remedy if they wish.
• To encourage and enable persons of concern to become actively involved in protecting women, men, girls and boys against SGBV, including through community-based protection networks and initiatives.
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