By Daniel Delury, University of Saskatoon
Daniel, a member of the University of Saskatoon Delegation and a then- Masters student in Sociology, spent 3 months in Mbarara, in Uganda, supporting local efforts to better the situation of children affected by AIDS.
Accepting the Ugandan internship took more belly than reason. When I was informed I had been accepted for the internship, I was planning on completing my Masters thesis by September. This internship landed right in my prime writing time. It would take more than three months out of my work and would push my graduation time back to May. This is my third year in a Sociology Masters program, so the department no longer funds my work, making finances tight. As well, I am getting married on the 2nd of December and the internship would take a large chunk of time just before this; time my fiancée and I had planned to use for preparations. Obviously, there were many good reasons to stay in Saskatoon. However, the work fit with many of the ideas and practical work I have been studying - I decided to go. It was not the easiest path, but it was definitely worthwhile.
In June, Dr. Claire Card of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM) was briefing me on the details of the internship. There were two proposals that the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) had accepted for their “Students for Development,” program funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Both were partnerships with WCVM at the University of Saskatchewan, the veterinary medicine department at Makarere University in Uganda, and a small, local Ugandan NGO, the Foundation for AIDS Orphaned Children (FAOC) in Mbarara, which became my home for the three months I stayed in Uganda.
FAOC works to empower vulnerable families where care-givers have died. Usually one or both parents have died of AIDS, leaving households headed by widows, and in cases where extended family has also died, children. Surviving family members have to overcome significant obstacles, such as living with HIV and AIDS, supporting a large family with income from unskilled labour, and living within traditional communities as working women who support themselves – not a traditional practice. Basic economic problems were immediately apparent. Many families live in houses which are incomplete or in desperate need of repair. Racking coughs can be heard in any group that come together; telltale signs of TB, especially dangerous to those that are HIV positive. Many children aren't regularly in school. As we were driving out to do field interviews and work, we would find them walking home along the red clay roads because they could not pay their fees that day.
How can a single woman or child with limited skills manage to support her children's immediate needs, including food, water, shelter, clothing, health and education? It might seem an impossible task, where a person’s well-being is too much intertwined with state and world economies for an individual to do anything. This is the approach that the Jeffery Sachs development villages take, building infrastructure and supporting local economies with large amounts of outside money (we visited a couple of these nearby – but that is another story). FAOC, on the other hand, has a household-level strategy that, although it has challenges, appears to be effective in the long term. FAOC works within seven parishes (a Ugandan regional designation of a small group of villages) where widows and orphans have come together and identified themselves and their interest in the project. In most parishes there were from 50-75 households involved. FAOC identifies needs, and works directly with beneficiaries to initiate positive changes at the household level. The plan is to facilitate people to work together to learn new skills and help themselves. Beneficiaries then pass on their knowledge and skills to others in their communities.
