Despite the extensive efforts being undertaken today to address the world’s pressing issues of sustainable development, it is clear that tomorrow’s leaders will be left with a legacy of huge challenges around preserving the environment and social cohesion. If we are to become a more sustainable society, our economic model will need to shift from being a growth and consumption model driven by excess and desire to one of sufficiency driven by need.
These interventions aim at equipping youth and poor households in hard to reach communities adjacent to protected areas with livelihood skills through provision of information, resources and vocational skills to overcome the aforementioned challenges. The youth and poor households need income generating activities (IGAs) so as to generate their own cash and be able to provide basic needs for their families. To achieve this, households and youth are involved in micro-finance models for the poor and agro-enterprise program.
Vocational training mainly salon and hair dressing, carpentry, tailoring and tie&dye, welding and cookery
Participatory market analysis and food security model.
These innovative models are arranged in phases that systematically consider social and environmental concerns alongside technological, commercial and enterprise selection planning and development.
The youth and rural households are engaged in production of cabbages, onions, tomatoes, beans, yams, ground nuts, millet, peas, maize, tea, coffee and cocoa. Families are further involved in group projects such as apiary, chicken rearing/poultry, piggery and goat rearing, commercial timber production and tree planting, tie & dye, crafts and beads production. The role of ITI is that of quality assurance, organize and empower farmers through provision of correct and accurate information at different stages of production. With new mobile phone technologies farmers can access cheap information services about farming practices, disease or vector control, market and prices of different products. ITI works with farmers to ensure accessibility and availability of safe storage and transport facilities and value addition of farmer produce by designing affordable and feasible mechanism that work in various geographical areas.
HIVAIDS epidemic continues to have an enormous impact on households, communities, businesses, public services and national economics. HIV/ADS affect children and youth profoundly. The problems are compounded when children who are themselves HIV positive are confronted with the medical problems associated with the disease. Accessibility and affordability of health services become another challenge. Thus, there is great need to help children and families infected or affected with HIV/AIDS and also educate healthy children and youth about HIV/AIDS prevention in communities around natural forests and water bodies where the problem is immense.
Our role is to provide life planning skills, vocational training skills especially to parenting teenagers. We continue to disseminate information and popularize the traditional HIV/AIDS prevention strategies following the Uganda National HIV/AIDS Strategic Framework- the ABC model and now circumcision among males. Through our school behavior change communication initiatives (BCC clubs) and out of school behavior change clubs, more young people and youth are reached through the peer education approach.
Stopping HIV/AIDS requires comprehensive strategies that focus on youth including high risk populations such as commercial sex workers, tea plantation workers, long-distance truck drivers, mobile motorcyclists (boda-boda) and fishing communities. Despite the disproportionate burden they carry - and the fact that they are more likely than adults to adopt and maintain safe behaviors - young people are routinely disregarded when strategies on HIV/AIDS are drafted, when policies are made and budgets are allocated.
Our main objective is to sensitize the youth and enhance individual risk perception with regard to factors that contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS through peer education, enter-education/drama, advocacy, vocational training and borrowing best practices used in African Traditional Sexuality Education (ATSE) where the roles of uncles played major roles is nurturing and fostering community and family values in young people- parent to child communication and community child concepts were emphasized. Our ultimate goal is that communities living near natural forests and other protected areas are healthy and self-sufficient and are able to care about their environment.
This project supplements orphan education scholarship scheme which does not have sustainability component within it. Our goal is to ensure each orphan grow up in a God loving, peaceful and economically self-sustaining home. In cases where one sponsor cannot assist in both the scholarship and a sustainable income generating project to the caregiver household, we advise the sponsor to identify a friend or family member to partner with in supporting the Ugandan family. In other instances a family may have 2 or more sponsors helping in different ways in order enable the family generate alternative source of income and be able to access basic needs and long term education of the children by itself rather than being dependent on the sponsor for all the family needs.
Under this intervention, we mainly encourage families to undertake projects which are less cumbersome to maintain especially chicken rearing /poultry, piggery and goat rearing. The money generated out of such projects is controlled by family members themselves with guidance from selected religious leader and ITI management. The family is highly advised to operate an account in a friendly village bank of their choice to ensure that income from the project is managed through their banker and all transactions are authorized by the family members and are in line with the family’s priority needs.
This project targets orphans and widow households living close to each other to facilitate easy monitoring and carrying out major events together. Some of the events may include a day for sharing blessings where the beneficiaries will give out some of the livestock to another poor neighbor who do not have any livestock. A criterion to guide this process was developed and the process is repeated every 2 years.
Under this intervention, beneficiary families in targeted communities are provided with seeds only for the first one year. At the end of the first planting season, the family is able to have enough food to eat and surplus for planting in the subsequent season. During the first season of the second year, the family should be able to have enough food to eat, seeds for planting and surplus for sale. During the second season of the second year, the family should be able to share a blessing/give away 30 kilograms of maize and 30 kilograms of beans with its closest and neediest neighbor.
The major crops promoted under this project include maize, beans and millet. This process is repeated once in a year for those families already in the second cycle of the project.
Families are further encouraged and trained in growing vegetables such as cabbages, onions, tomatoes, yams, ground nuts, peas, tea, coffee and cocoa. The role of ITI is that of quality assurance, organizing and empowering farmers through provision of correct and accurate information at different stages of production. With new mobile phone technologies farmers are trained on how to easily access cheap information services about farming practices, disease or vector control, market and prices of different products using the association’s telephone. ITI works with farmers to ensure accessibility and availability of safe storage and transport facilities and value addition of farmer produce by designing affordable and feasible mechanism that work in various geographical areas.
This project aims at equipping and empowering people with disabilities, out of school orphans and teenage mothers and widows with knowledge and skills of producing beads, garments and handcrafts which would lead to income generation and self-sufficiency. The products are produced and in turn sold to generate income to meet their household needs such as medical care, clothing, food and other needs. The members are also engaged in buying and selling produce such as coffee, maize, beans and ground nuts to make profits.
The widows and orphans are then involved in village savings and loans associations to increase their saving culture and investment opportunities within their villages.
The main challenge facing this project is lack of a showroom to display the handcrafts, garments and beads which limits their sales. Competition and lack of ready market for their products also affects their business to progress well.
ITI seek to address the need for holistic approach to climate change adaptation and mitigation in communities adjacent to natural forests, national parks, water bodies and swamps to realize low carbon and climate resilient development for environmental sustainability.
Environment degradation is a major global challenge which mainly affects the poor. The need to conserve the environment has become increasingly important for our own survival and other species.
Our aim is to protect key catchment areas since the lives of people and ecosystems rely heavily on such watersheds. Promoting sustainable clean energy sources such as biogas and energy saving stoves to reduce reliance on wood-fuel, litter clean up campaigns, bio diversity preservation, wildlife conservation campaigns, solid waste management, and recycling, integrated water resource management approaches, community and household driven tree planting initiatives and school children focused environmental sustainability initiatives are promoted.
We at ITI aim to assist the youth and communities in realizing their full potential in environmental sustainability programs by:
Supporting youth groups and households with the necessary tools so as they can achieve their goals.
Providing training that builds the capacity of the youth, poor households and community leaders on environmental issues.
Strengthen the involvement of the youth in environment conversation programs.
Create awareness of the millennium development goals and the importance of achieving them in relation to the environment.
Under this intervention, an individual or a family or an organization may donate a tree(s), construct an energy saving stove for a poor family living near our catchment area, contribute towards or buy land for tree planting project by making a monthly or annual or a one-time donation to support this campaign. Contribution can also be made towards training costs, construction and maintenance costs of a tree nursery bed or buying equipment (garden tools, wheelbarrow and safety gears).
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
ITI’s environmental health activities aim to improve the target population’s access to clean and safe drinking water, prevent outbreak of diseases such as bilharzia, elephantiasis, malaria, river blindness and maintain healthy living conditions. Environmental health activities focus on promotion of health education and hygiene promotion in schools and communities, in conjunction with interventions to improve infrastructure to increase access to quality water and sanitation facilities. This approach combines the benefit of addressing immediate community water and sanitation needs while increasing local knowledge and promoting good health and hygiene practices.
Provision for and management of safe water and sanitation are essential conditions for both human health and economic development. Water and sanitation issues remain critical challenges in communities neighboring protected areas where water sources are infested with microbes and viruses that enter the human body thus causing water related illnesses such as diarrhea, river blindness and elephantiasis. Absence of health education coupled with lack of adequate health care facilities and clean or safe water has direct correlation to disease incidence and poverty, unless adequately addressed the community remains impoverished and disempowered.
Our prayer is to continue providing clean water (boreholes, water tanks for schools and shallow wells), scaling up health education through provision of information and services.
We need to build community food stores, seeds, garden tools, maize milling machines for value addition so that the farmers in their association can sell a well packaged floor which can produce more profits.
