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.
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.
The the batwa children face the challenges and difficulties when trying to access education this is mostly due to the humble background they come from. They face challenges of lacking school fees, uniform, books and other scholastic materials. Mostly those in secondary schools, universities and technical institutions. This is because it has become difficult for sponsors to support children in those levels because the costs of needs are very high compared to primary costs. Other challenges that cause batwa children to drop out of schools is early pregnancy among girls and early marriage among both girls and batwa boys. Other issues originate from negative attitudes towards the long system of education and limited support from parents considering the issue of culture where batwa parents fail to realize the future purpose of education compared to culture. Barwa children also face discrimination in schools, discrimination from fellow non-batwa students at times discrimination from teachers as well also cause batwa children to develop the negative attitudes towards education.
In this strategy batwa children who have got the willingness to take on education will be identified and directly supported with scholastic materials such as:
-school fees
-uniforms
-books and pens
And other schools requirements like mattress, suit case for those who will be going for boarding schools.
COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP AND SUSTAINABILITY - BATWA PARENTS ASSOCIATION.
In this strategy we will be targeting parents for the children whom we will be supporting in schools under this project. The main objective of this strategy is to equip the batwa parents with leadership skills that can put them in position to be able to support their children as much as they can be able and also being able to take responsibility of caring for their children. This will reduce the costs of asking donors to pay for simple equipment’s parents may be capable of providing to their children.
Batwa children face several challenges of discrimination and sexual harassment mostly female children this threatens them to the extent that that it leads to school dropout even before they can complete their studies. This is why we are coming up with a strategy to engage education stake holders like the primary schools, secondary school and universities where our children will be attending. By this we will make sure that the institutions realize the levels of the capacity of batwa children such that they can be able to create the safe environment for batwa children to study well without discrimination and harassment.
EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS AND EMPOWERMENT (MENTORSHIP PROGRAM)
The mentorship program will target the batwa children who will be supported under this project. The main objective of this strategy is to sensitize the supported batwa children to realize the purpose of education such that they avoid messing up while they are in schools. Also sensitizing them to play some roles to their families when they are holidays and also to build them into a volunteering team that can volunteer in organizations during their free holiday times.
batwazindigenous@yahoo.com
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