PROJECT BACK GROUND.
The Batwa in six districts in western Uganda are among the minority tribes being threatened by extinction due to isolation, discrimination, high maternity rates, and high illiteracy rate as recorded by the health centers that have taken Batwa health and sanitation records.
The average rate of unemployment among Batwa is at 99.3% in all 6 districts. Their rights have always been abused in a permanent vicious circle of poverty. Currently only 10 batwa students have been able to complete their education degrees and about four others completed school with diploma about other more five completed school with certificates. But all of them no one is been employed within the government. This is because there is too much discrimination within government structures of employment. And too much bureaucratic proceedures that minority batwa can’t be able to compete through and get employed
Only two have been employed in Non-governmental organizations established by bakyiga people including Alice nyamihanda who is employed in UOBDU and Scholar who is employed in BMCT a few others like kokunda Sylvia, T. Julius and AHIMBISIBWE Alex have lead their communities to establish CBOs and NGOs while the rest are in their homes without any employment.
Other batwa children who are still going through education still face challenges of lacking education facilities to use while in school such as school fees, uniform, books, and other scholastic materials that may be required to those ones who want to join boarding sections and they either end up dropping out of school before they complete school.
Some organizations lhave tried to support batwa people in education by providing such school requirements but still they have not achieved the goal of educating batwa children. This is because some sponsors either meet challenges and they fail to continue sponsoring batwa children, others raise limited financial support and they are not able to reach to all batwa children. While other organizations are never serious they are only exploiting batwa children There are some other small organizations in Uganda mostly in kisoro, kanungu, other districts that are not actually supporting batwa children but exploiting them. They take them at a young age train them in dances and they spend their early age performing for tourists as their boss harvest money from
tourists when they grow up some girls are either employed to serve in bars as waitress where they get exposed to prostitution and its risky effects while other are released to back to their communities and they take on early marriages. This is been very well witnessed in mukungu batwa community and it has affected this community to the extent that up to now they don’t have any student who ever completed school even when it is most batwa populated community.
Most batwa children drop out of school before they complete their studies due to marginalization and discrimination they face in school, school fees charges in secondary and university schools which are not affordable to the batwa people. Lack of parental support in education. This because the batwa parents do not understand the purpose of education to their children, others are very poor and they are not able to raise support to their children
Following the above reasons it’s one of the purpose we have been able to establish Batwa indigenous development organization with the goal to lay strategies to address such challenges faced by batwa such us limited access to education. Many other organizations have played their part performing the roles they have been able to do but it is also important us Batwa people to take part in raising support and addressing such education challenges and other challenges faced by our communities like hunger, un-employment, exploitation, human rights violations among others and this will be achieved once we have more batwa children who complete their education and they get skills to help them determine their self-reliable future.
The major concern of this project is to offer the Batwa youth generation a better living by equipping them with special live skills for their economic empowerment.
Since the batwa people have not been considered within the public employment which may have been due to low levels of education, low skilled due to lack of vocational knowledge setting up a skills development center for the batwa youth may be the right option towards solving the problem of poverty and unemployment among the batwa youth.
This project will be different as it will be designed and run by the community for the community – addressing the children’s specific needs in a way that builds pride, rather than shame, in the Twa identity and works with, rather than against, our indigenous knowledge. Elders will be involved in the project at all stages from design to monitoring and, especially, in teaching indigenous knowledge to the students. The school will secure permits to allow the children to access the forest. Elders can then teach cultural practices and practical skills such as honey collecting, hunting and gathering as an integral part of the school curriculum.
The school will initially cater at first for approximately 150 children (Boys – 85 and Girls – 65) from six Batwa communities in Kirundo sub-district, on the edge of Bwindi. The school will need to employ several teachers to cater the needs of the students. The community will provide additional teaching staff and volunteers, especially the elders who will focus on Twa cultural values.
There is an urgent need for this school. One parent said, “In the coming years there will no Twas any more if our children are taught other cultures than ours.” Another said, “We were removed from our forest and they are forcing us to adapt but schooling will make my children hate me,” because at current schools Batwa children are made to feel so ashamed of themselves, their families, their homes and their people.
This project will be a unique project among the projects where the batwa youth will be offered to free skills education from this skills training center.
At the starting of this project atleast 50 batwa youth will be registered following the available learning equipments. And two skills will start immediately at the opening of this skills learning center.
Both Tailoring and sewing will be implemented and latter carpentry will be introduced in the learning center after seeing the real start up of this initial skills work.
We hope to secure an area or a ready constructed building within rushaga village,kirundo sub county, kisoro district uganda. For the setup of this learning center. We will also ensure that this project is accessible to all the batwa communities by selecting batwa youth from each of the batwa community around kisoro district.
The project will be initiated and implemented by the batwa community organization (bido) Parterning with uganda wild life authority who will provide the community officer to do the supervision of the project progress. The clear financial will be properly represented to ensure proper use of financial resources.
batwazindigenous@yahoo.com
+256777594229/+256770869720
