OBJECTIVE: TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE ALLIVIATION OF POVERTY AMONG PEOPLE LIVING WITH SICKLE CELL

Sickle Cell management and care has a big financial burden to the affected families. This burden is as a result of the frequent hospitalizations of the persons living with sickle cell. To the Care-takers /family members there is loss of productive time due to work absenteeism which leads to loss of employment in most cases.   Our economic empowerment program enables us to promote poverty alleviation through agribusiness and art and crafts.  This program is in its initial stages and it is spear headed by our Sickle Cell Family Forum.

Through research we noticed that families with kids having sickle cell are economically strained and very depressed since women tend to leave their jobs with an aim of looking after their kids. So the financial burden is left with the man yet they also don’t earn much to sustain the whole family. So as an organization we formed mothers’ forum support group. The main aim of this group was to offer counseling and psychosocial support to these mothers and care givers since they needed the counseling and sensitization on sickle cell, but we later realized that through this we can have a project to help the mothers who are financially strained and stay home to get economically empowered.

It’s through this that AGT a company  that  is owned by one of our board members provided these mothers with  banana suckers  and gave in an agriculturalist to help educate on how to grow them all at zero cost . This was very beneficial to all mothers and they took on the project and its very successful especially to those that have their own land. They grow, sell and get money and also get food for their families. Those without land, Roofings, also owned by one of our board members provided them with land in kigyabijo Gayaza road to do collective farming and it’s monitored by the organization.

With all this in place, these families have improved on their standards of living.