Project proposal

PROJECT TITLE:  NO MORE SILENCE ON THE VIOLATION OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS – SPEAK NOW

Children abuse has been considered a minor epidemic in Africa and mainly Uganda , yet it’s an inferno to children and  society at large, the abuse of children’s rights loosely ignored in the nation of Uganda, has caused amazing national threats; as abused children loose not only their future but also are exposed to other dangerous epidemics like HIV/AIDS. Local leaders, Stake holders, Police, Head teachers, Policy makers, Implementers and Parents have blacked out a deaf ear to children rights, and are taking it as second priority issue. Such ignored incidents have caused vulnerability of children, to abuses un describable like, rape, drug abuse, defilement, forced marriages, prostitution, low self esteem, crime rates increase, fatigue, stress etc. This has caused children to adapt to abuse as a normal life and a socially acceptable norm, young girls raped by uncles, brothers, friends, view this as normal way of life and they are even shamed to report them to authorities.

In Mityana District where we intend to make intervention, the situation is alarming, though not ruling out the fact that it’s located in the central region of the Republic of Uganda in East Africa and has a population of about 800,000 people (National census 2007 report) most of whom are dependant that’s (children)

The problem

 The problem of Child rights abuse ranks high amongst the crimes that are committed in the country. According to the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC Annual Report of 2006, Page 93) it’s indicated that child abuse cases reported were 106 countrywide and Mityana District where we intend to implement this project reported 38 cases, thus ranked highest. UHRC annual report of 2008 indicates that the figures have tripled to 318 (UHRC 2008, Page 58) this makes the situation alarming and needs immediate attention of all stakeholders. The report further shows that the abuse take form of forced marriages, rape, defilement, denial of education even when there is Universal Primary and Secondary Education. Other forms include childhard labor, child sacrifice linked with witchcraft, child headed families (a child carrying a child), prostitution and forced bar attendants.

In the 2008 UHRC Annual report, of the 318 cases reported to the different Police Stations, only 29 cases were referred to court rooms and only two convicts were secured, while the majority of 256 where just under inquiry and 31 cases were put away and 153 their status is unknown. This implies that no further action was taken or that parents never bothered to follow up or withdrew them because of bribes from convicts like bride price. This is because there is scarcity of information on children rights and ignorance of law requirement in this rural sub county of Kakindu, mainly because most people don’t even know how to read and write, due to the fact that children are taken as second citizens and no major activity for children rights has been scaled up.

In the African network for the prevention and protection against child abuse and neglect (ANPPCAN Annual Report 2007 reported over 12,300 were defiled, while their 2008 Annual reports  over  61,888 children were defiled and 650,000 were forced into marriages by their parents  and guardians.  However there are so many unreported cases that need to be followed in the communities if we are to save the children to have a descent living atmosphere. Some of these vices take place because there is no Parent Child Communication and this will surely be addressed during implementation.   

Proposed intervention:

Struggles for fighting for Children’s rights are undeniably of importance, for this not only reduce children’s abuse but also the risks of acquiring epidemics like HIV/AIDS and attempts to drug addiction and abuse. Helping abused children requires advocacy to bring the government’s attention to the urgent need to review the laws on children rights and put into action the international conventions on children rights.  In “NO MORE SILENCE ON THE VIOLATION OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS – SPEAK NOW campaign project”, we intend to contribute to the same by having a lively interaction with the young people. By carring out a march in the four parishes with the young people advocating their rights openly to the society, with 100 young people in the four parishes of Kakindu sub county; Kiwande, Mawanda, Vvumbe, Mwera to arouse and accredit awareness of violation of children’s rights with banners advocating for children’s rights, the march will be accompanied with a one music band starting from 9:00 am from Kiwande via Vvumbe through Mawanda to Mwera and then come back to Kakindu community hall where speeches against child abuse will be given from selected stakeholders, policy makers, one parent, one youth and project coordinator, after we shall have some refreshments to the 100 youth. This will be with in January 2010 – March 2010.

Project Goal: To increase awareness to the communities, including children, parents, and leaders of the country at all levels on Children’s rights and the need for action to fight their violation. 

We intend to address the above issues in a rather unique manner; by using documentary film techniques, we intend to shoot a documentary video to reflect real life effects and traumas of young people who have been abused and effects inflicted on their lives as a result of such abuses. Profiling young people, from the rural area of Kakindu sub county parishes of Kiwande, Mwera, Vvumbe, and Mawanda both in and out of school who have been abused, parents whose children are exposed, local leaders and different policy makers, and we shall involve young people with filming skills in every process of this documentary; that is planning, script writing and filming upon briefing them on the expected outputs. This involvement of young people in this process we believe will cause opening up of young people.

We intend to bring out testimonies of children (in and out of school) testisfying to abuse from parties, too share with them their rights and later show the documentary in a dissemination workshop for one day highlighting real life experiences, pointing out the challenges of all parties of immediate and after effects, bring awareness to them of their rights, expose abuses in different sectors, impact of abuses, opinions of second parties and what they think the government has or has not done to curb this problem in the country, we have also requested for consultation fee (in the budget) to be able to hire a consultant who is well conversant with documentation to assist the team during the project.

Project Objective.

1.      To increase awareness and exposure of the violation of children’s rights and the dangers of child abuse to 100 people in Kakindu sub county by January 2011.

2.      To form a team 70 people that will advocate for policies and guideline changes on children rights by January 2011.

How?

We intend to implement the “NO MORE SILENCE ON THE VIOLATION OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS – SPEAK NOW campaign project”, in three major activities as listed below.

1. We shall conduct a march in the four parishes to create awareness of children rights with over 100 children to communities, with banners, and get presentations in the evening about children rights from different stake holders.
2. We shall shoot a 20 minutes documentary on real life experiences of child abuse, and reactions from the different stakeholders.
3. We shall conduct a dissemination workshop of 70 participants to show the documentary for the first time participants in project the project findings and forge a way forward for the situation and project and select other areas with need intervention.

Implementation of the above activities will be conducted in seven phase as follows

Phase one: Pre planning; planning meetings will be with project personnel, volunteers, stakeholders, and policy makers. We shall organize 5 meetings as members of the project team, this team shall comprise of 1 project coordinator and 4 volunteers. The team will meet to plan when to carry out pre-visits on locations of places, setting parameters of implementations and when to meet different stakeholders that will include among others Police, Parents, Local Councils, affected children, Head teachers, Religious Leaders and policy makers. They will be enlighted about the rationale of the project interventions and their roles/level of involvement clearly spelt out . Research real life experiences to feature in video, convene a meeting to discuss and agree on the selection criteria for identifying children and people to be involved in the shooting, convene meeting to discuss the march to be launched in the four parishes, discuss selection criteria of people to be filmed and associated in the march, conduct orientation and preplanning meetings (script writing), acquire documentation equipments.

Phase two: Launched March: We shall launch a march of 100 young people in the four parishes of Kakindu Sub County; Kiwande, Mawanda, Vvumbe, Mwera to accredit awareness of violation of children’s rights with banners advocating for Children’s Rights. The march will be a full day event that will be accompanied with a one music band starting from 9:00 am from Kiwande via Vvumbe through Mawanda to Mwera and then come back to Kakindu community hall where we shall have presentations from the different Children Rights activists’ stakeholders, policy makers including the children.

Phase three: production; to film all scenarios and stories (this includes children abused with even marks of abuse), especially those in the communities. Participants will be selected/ identified prior in order to seek their consent on the documentary and to also build their confidence to share their experiences. We may film at least 18 participants (including children in and out of schools, parents and government officials, and select the best of 10 for use in the video. We shall hire services of a consultant to write us a 20 minutes script that will comprise scenes that will feature in the 20 minutes documentary. A van will be hired during the filming process; young people will be involved in the shooting and script development to allow young people to open up on such issues.

Phase four: post production; shooting rough edits, pre-testing these shots with technical personnel, and get feed back on the raw data achieved and updating and incorporating more review on the shots taken.

Phase five: screening CINEDUC; screening will be done in identified communities and schools to bring more young people on board and to get back feed back on the documentary.

Phase six: Mastering and Distribution; At least one DVD to be delivered for each school and plan to pilot the project in at least 18 schools of Kakindu sub county and we shall also disseminate videos to community centers and youth organizations like; National council for children, ANPPCAN, AYA, Care for children because these are children organizations committed up lifting of children’s lives.

Phase seven: get feed back from beneficiaries: we shall conduct a dissemination workshop/meeting with a team of 70 young people and key stakeholders to discuss and get feed back on the documentary and further forge a way forward with stakeholders on how to curb the problem of child abuse. The dissemination meeting shall be held at Kakindu Community hall, and will include Government officials Parents, Policy implementers, Policy makers and Children participants, it will be a one day workshop, to show the documentary of the project to participants, hear testimonies and real life experiences from abused children.

Project Time - Line; Septermber  2010 –November 2010 phase one and two begins,  Dec 2011- June  2011 phase three, four, five  and six begins and completed, Jul 2011 – September 2011 phase seven completed.  (Timing may change due to un avoidable conditions like availability of people and places)

Project expected outputs;

Ø  Accredited awareness to both young and community members about the children rights and dangers of child abuse

Ø  Shall have gained team of young people to fight for children rights and abuse (70 team membership)

Ø  We shall have influenced over 70 different stake holders who will have the capacity to fight for children rights and advocate for good policies for the betterment of children in the area.

Ø  We shall have influence over 100 young people in the launched march with in Kakindu Sub County with exposure to children’s rights who will in turn influence and advocate to and for others in the area.

Summary

Through launching this march and shooting this documentary, we believe that this shall enable us achieve the intended objectives of this project, which are to; to create a awareness and exposure of the violation of children’s rights and the dangers of child abuse to people in Kakindu sub county and the country at large, and to form a teams of people that will advocate for policies and guideline changes on children rights. By showing real life experiences of young people that have been abused and affected, the viewer will get a honest picture of the dangers that children are exposed to and how this links to drug abuse and HIV/AIDS infection. The involvement of parents will show concern and need for parents intervention to support children and stake holder fight children abuse. One of our biggest expectations is to see government and different stakeholders take their positions in protecting children’s rights both in this Sub County and national wide.

REPORTING AND EVALUATION.

We shall write a project report as soon as all planned activities are accomplished to document lessons learnt during implementation, success stories, challenges faced and recommendations. Also, we intend to register at least 170 young people committed against child abuse. There shall be a workshop with the above team to get feed back from them on the filming and also evaluate the project. At least one guest from the government, National Council for Children will be invite to the above workshop. It will also be through questionnaires to beneficiaries, conduct review meetings with Local/Religious leaders.

We shall also build a resource center where young people can access such information, on the violation of children’s rights, and their policies for stopping such abuse, this will involve, hard copies of DVDs, file data, website designing, to even link up with other international sources and bodies, and also acquire information through this website from other countries, and international bodies. We also plan to record success stories of the participating young people at least a year after the documentary.

Upon approval of this project, we expect to get monitoring tools like reporting formats which the funders of the project would prefer us to use. We however have such tools tin place incase we must use ours.

BUDGET NARRATIVE

We aim to pilot this project in Mityana district, Kakindu sub county four parishes; Kiwande, Mwera, Vvumbe, Mawanda parishes and if successful, we would hope to get more funding to bring this program to more areas. For purposes of sustainability, we propose to expand the project to other areas upon the success of the pilot project.  We shall also liaise with the organization where we work to facilitate us with documentation equipments like: TV screen and deck for purposes of efficiency and effectiveness. We have proposed to hire a specialist (consultant) for technical assistance during the production.

Project budget:

The budget is attached in excel please check it out and see

Project sustainability;

• Through the gained team of 70 youth who will still advocate for children’s rights, even after the project has ended in the area.
• Through the influenced stakeholders, and policy makers to take action on children’s rights, through making new policies and review of  old policies already established by state.
• Taking the pilot project to other areas of need.
• Through second phase funding from YAF

Strategic Partnership

  We shall have partnership with different organs and persons which shall include.

Stake holder

Reason for collaboration

1.

Ministry of Education

 We shall collaborate with them because some of the abusers  are teachers in the schools thus we need to link with them through the ministry and students themselves, and they shall avail us with some literature.

2.

Ministry of Local Government

We shall collaborate with these because of the presence of probation officers who are directly responsible for abused children who may need rehabilitation and may be referred to for assistance and help

3.

Police

We shall collaborate with them because they are one the Law enforcers who may need to see the gaps in children rights highlighted and thus equip them to fight more on a higher ground

4.

Ministry of Health

We shall collaborate with them because some children have been abused sexually and need mental help and spiritual help to rehabilitate them to fit again in society plus checking their health status, which includes treating them offering them counseling services and providing us with some literature.

5.

Uganda Human Rights Commission / UPCAAN

We shall collaborate with them for resource and information for the ongoing of the project.

Parents

We shall collaborate with them because they are the parents of the abused children and some of them are the abusers either directly of indirectly.

Local leaders

We shall need to collaborate with them because they are witnesses to some of child abuses and need information on their rights and how to intervene, and curb it’s stoppage in the area and also know how to implement and administer the set rights and law for children.

Religious

 We shall collaborate with them because the abused children may need spiritual support, counseling and including messages of children rights in their sermons to reduce of child abuse as they meet different calibers of people.

Referee

MR Musoke Kisitu Barnabus

Program Coordinator Kampala Diocese (CHURCH OF UGANDA)

P.O BOX 16539 KAMPALA UGANDA

Email: musokekisitu@yahoo.com

Locations